Sterling Biotech to invest Rs 600 cr for expansion

VADODARA: Sandesara group’s Sterling Biotech plans to invest about Rs 600 crore to ramp up the manufacturing capacities of gelatin and coenzyme (Q10) at its facilities in Vadodara. The company is also considering increasing the manufacturing capacity of its recently acquired unit in China.

A Sterling Biotech executive told ET the company is open to setting up greenfield facilities both in India and overseas.

Sterling Biotech, which already enjoys an 8% share of the global pharmaceutical gelatin market, is targeting a 12-15% share over the next three years.

Q10 is an important healthcare supplement for heart ailments, hypertension, AIDS, asthma, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease and is an element in the body to generate energy from food.

“We will have capacity to produce 45 tonnes of Q10 by 2008 at our Masar facility which we acquired from the Torrent group in 2005. We plan to invest about Rs 300 crore in phases to ramp up the facility that is producing less than 10 tonnes of Q10,” the official says. According to him, work on the first phase with an investment of Rs 120 crore is already on.

The market for Q10 is growing rapidly with healthcare majors, food and FMCG manufacturers increasing its usage. The market size for high value Q10 that costs in the range of $2 lakh to $2.50 lakh a tonne is being estimated at $2 billion per annum globally.

Sterling Biotech plans to increase the gelatin manufacturing capacity from 15,000 tonnes per annum to 22,000 tonnes pa in next couple of years at its Vadodara facility.

“We would also consider capacity expansion at our unit in China and replacement of plant and machinery at Ooty in south India subsequently. The capacity expansions would be funded with the recently issued FCCBs,” the official said.

Pharmaceutical gelatin is used for making capsules, tablets, vitamins and blood plasma expander for applications in treatment of arthritis, bleeding disorders and cartilage-related disease.