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Natural Biogenex to invest Rs. 100 crore for production of 3 APIs under PLI scheme
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
March 02 , 2021
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Natural Biogenex, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Natural Capsules, is speeding up its efforts to manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) following the recent grant from Union government’s production linked incentive (PLI) scheme to offset the import dependence.
The three products for which it received the PLI approvals are betamethasone with a production capacity of 12 MT at an investment of Rs 31.43 crore, dexamethasone of 10 MT with an investment of Rs. 26.19 crore and prednisolone of 15 MT at Rs 39. 29 crore. This takes the total investment to Rs 96.91 core.
The company’s greenfield facility in Vasanthnarsapura Karnataka Industrial Area, Tumkur district, Karnataka, is under construction and is expected to be commissioned by April, 2022, well before the PLI scheme deadline of April 1, 2023. This will entail workforce hiring of over 110 personnel too.
In 2018, the Bengaluru-based Natural Capsules set up an R&D centre in at Attibele, Bengaluru. In 2020, when PLI scheme was announced it applied for the same. Meanwhile, as the government has offered income tax benefits to new entities, Natural Capsules decided to implement the project under its wholly owned subsidiary Natural Biogenex which is dedicated for APIs.
The products approved for Natural Biogenex under PLI are betamethasone, dexamethasone and prednisolone which utilize a combination of fermentation and chemical synthesis steps. As Natural Capsules did not have access to this manufacturing technology, its R&D centre, which is DSIR approved, had started working on the same since 2018, and has now successfully developed the process including fermentation and chemical synthesis steps, Sunil Mundra, managing director, Natural Capsules told Pharmabiz.
He also mentioned that derivatives of these APIs and lot of other value-added APIs in the same range will also be manufactured at the new facility.
The PLI scheme aims to accelerate indigenous manufacturing of critical bulk drugs for which India is dependent on imports. Under this scheme government offered incentives varying between 10 to 20%. For category of products which involve fermentation technologies, incentive is 20 per cent of the approved sales price. The government has put a cap of Rs. 10 crore per product per annum for five years. This is a seven year scheme from 2023-24 going up to 2029-30.
This scheme also stipulates minimum domestic value addition in different target segments. Fermentation based products should have at least 90% and chemical synthesis based products should have at least 70% domestic content to qualify for the benefits. This scheme has a total outlay of Rs. 6,940 crore for the entire period. The applications under four different target segments were invited on November 30, 2020. Of the 215 applications, 36 products across the 4 target segments were granted. Along with Natural Biogenix were Symbiotec Pharmalab, Macleods Pharmaceutical, Optimus Drugs, Sudarshan Pharma, Saraca Laboratories, Emmennar Pharma, Hindys Lab, Aarti Speciality, Meghmani LLP and and Sadhana Nitro Chem.
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