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Anthem Biosciences to invest Rs. 500 crore for expansion of business
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Nandita Vijay, Bengaluru
March 09 , 2021
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Anthem Biosciences has slated a Rs. 500 crore investment plan that includes a Greenfield unit 3 and an expansion of its existing second unit. Recently, private equity player True North picked up an 8 per cent stake in the company after valuing the Bengaluru-based Anthem at $1 billion.
The company’s manufacturing facilities are at Harohalli industrial zone in Ramanagara district in Karnataka. While the unit 2 is a brownfield project which is expected to be commissioned in October this year, unit 3 of the company is a Greenfield venture.
“We have a plan in place and are investing in new facilities because we are experiencing a crunch in terms of capacities. The effort has been to stay away from importing. So long, at least 60 to 70 per cent of raw materials were imported from China and now this has been reduced to 20 per cent. The company identified several production capacities in the Hyderabad and Vijayawada region and offered the required manufacturing technology. These manufacturers became our source of supply and also for others for the much-needed Key Starting Materials (KSMs), Ajay Bhardwaj, chief executive officer, Anthem Biosciences told Pharmabiz in a telecom.
At this point of time, we are yet to look into the Union government’s productivity linked incentive (PLI) scheme. Anthem has never been in the area of generics. Most of our products are new chemical entities (NCEs) for global pharma and also nutritional products which are unique in their formulations where we have an intellectual property (IP), he added.
“Our Brownfield expansion is 50 per cent ready which would be functional in October. Since we have more land in the vicinity of our existing units, we will start a Greenfield facility which is the unit 3. For these expansion Rs. 500 crore is planned. However, the Greenfield project will constitute a major chunk of the investments and this will be in phases,” said Bhardwaj.
The company which was set up in 2007 at the Bommasandra Industrial Area in Bengaluru still houses its GMP pilot plant, cGMP kilo lab with a full-fledged medicinal chemistry department, among others.
Since the company has a good footprint in biology, it will manufacture biologics from its new units at Harohalli. The additional capacities will be for new products including oncology therapies. “Our effort is to increase our focus on new green technology, where we will use transformative bio molecules by using less solvents along with flow chemistry and cyclic peptides for oncology product development,” he said.
With a current 1,300 staff strength, the manufacturing unit expansions will require an additional 400 people. Stating that Anthem’s journey so far has been successful, Bhardwaj pointed out, “We stayed away from generics and have become a partner of choice for global players. Soon we will be the first company to develop a novel biologics for a global company for which the process validation is on.”
In addition, we developed around 3 to 4 drugs for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). Specifically remdesivir, Anthem provided the key ingredient to make the product soluble to be used as an injectable and has supplied this to many companies, said Bhardwaj.
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