The Indian contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) has a 30 per cent share in the new business, with the remainder of the firm being split between formulation firm Spimaco, ACDMA and the Capital Advisory Group.
The unit, which is scheduled to be up and running in just over a year’s time, will operate from a purpose-built active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) making facility that is currently being built just outside the Saudi capital Riyadh.
Dishman spokesman Henk Pluim told in-PharmaTechnologist that: “The detailed engineering of the API production facility will be completed by end of January and construction of that facility will start early March.”
Pluim explained that although the Middle Eastern market will be the initiation focus, “The facility will be fully cGMP compliant [so] it also offers in the second phase access for certain APIs to customers in the rest of the world.
“Currently the Saudi Arabian and Middle East markets … are fully served from abroad and, for Dishman, [are currently] of minor importance and therefore this [JV} offers for us a nice growth potential in this region.”
According to a report in the Business Standard the Saudi Industrial Development Fund has offered a $55m (€38m) 15-year loan to support the project.
Capacity expansion
The Riyadh plant is not the only one in which Dishman is investing at the moment. In November the firm opened HPAPI and vitamin D analogue high containment cGMP laboratory in the Netherlands
Dishman is also spending INR1.5bn (€22.2m) to expand its contract manufacturing facility in Bavla, India and plans to invest a up to INR6bn in four facilities in special economic zones (SEZ) in the country over the next five years.
And finally, Dishman’s Arabian wing has entered into a second JV in Saudi Arabia, this time partnering with Takamul to set up a disinfected making facility.