Julphar's facility in Saudi to begin operation by end-2016

The Dh300 million Julphar's Saudi Arabia oral preparations facility is expected to begin its operations by end-2016, Chairman of the Board of Gulf Pharmaceutical Industries (Julphar) Sheikh Faisal bin Saqr Al Qasimi, told the board meeting on Saturday, adding that the company has commenced installing pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment and recruiting the administrative and technical staff.

Al Qasimi said construction of the first Emirati-Saudi investment partnership in the pharmaceutical industry was progressing as scheduled.

"Built on an area of 10,000 square metre out of total area of 73,000 square metre, the state-of-the-art plant will have annual total capacity (phase one) of 1 billion tablets, 500 million capsules, 30 million bottles of syrups and suspensions. Phase two will produce biotechnology medicines," he indicated.

The fully automated plants have incorporated sophisticated processes and control systems, which consist of raw material transfer through closed systems, recipe management with minimal operator intervention, automated cleaning to avoid the cross contamination, in-process controls systems to ensure the consistent product quality and higher standard clean utilities systems to produce the quality stable product.

Julphar Saudi Arabia plant is built following the best international practices and the state-of-the-art production and packaging equipment.

During the meeting, the Board of Directors meeting reviewed the financial report for 2015, which said the company registered a rise in sales revenue to Dh1.440 billion in 2015 from Dh1.433 bn in 2014.

Gross profit during the year was Dh884 million, up 3.1 per cent over that of 2014. Net profit for the year 2015 was Dh243.5m, an increase of 3.7 per cent.

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