Neuland Laboratories Limited, a provider of API and other essential drug discovery and development support services, announced its foray into peptides segment thus taking another step to bring synergy to the company?s contract research and generic APIs business.
Announcing this, DR Rao, CMD said ?Neuland?s objective is to become an end-to-end service provider for the pharmaceutical industry. From our current capabilities of API manufacturing and contract research services, we want to expand our capabilities into areas of clinical research and subsequently other areas of drug discovery support services and the foray into peptides is just another step towards achieving the same.?
The foray into the peptide segment would be in two phases. While the first phase will see Neuland developing a non-GMP facility for synthesis of peptides both for generic API and contract research opportunities, the second phase will offer contract manufacturing of peptides at commercial scale under GMP environment for both generic and innovator companies.
Over the next two years Neuland will integrate the peptide value chain by leveraging on the existing expertise in API and contract manufacturing, thus creating a niche opportunity for itself in this segment. The company will develop in-house process capabilities for commercial manufacture of peptides, he said.
The company would continue to increase its product range by adding approximately 20 new products this year to its existing portfolio of APIs that will help sustain and grow the core capabilities of the company.
Meanwhile, the company announced a growth of 8.4% in its operating profit and a 45% jump in its net sales for the third quarter. The company reported net sales of Rs 83.39 crore as against Rs 57.52 crore during the same period in the previous fiscal.
The operating profit of the company for the quarter ended December 31, 2008 was Rs 7.48 crore as against Rs 6.9 crore in the corresponding period of previous fiscal.
Total income stood at Rs 84.47 crore as against Rs 57.71crore during the same period in the previous fiscal, a growth of 46.37%. The company recorded a net profit of Rs 1.84 crore, during this quarter.
