Last year, the pharmaceutical company Pharmas, founded in 2014, plans to become the ninth largest pharmaceutical company in Croatia by 2015, it was stated at a press conference where the company’s further plans were presented.
In five years, Pharmas, which will begin commercial operations in the first half of 2011, expects to generate revenue of around 200 million kuna in Croatia. Long-term revenue projections for the Serbian market, where Pharmas has just completed the acquisition of two companies, Ni Medic and In Med (acquiring a 76 percent ownership stake), were not disclosed, but the CEO, Zdravka Knežević, stated that it will certainly be more than two million euros. Indeed, that was the annual revenue generated by the aforementioned companies that Pharmas acquired. The company Ni Medic was founded by Nenad Gazikalović in 2001 in Niš, and it received its first marketing authorization for the drug Bisoprolol in 2006. Today, Ni Medic has nine drugs in its portfolio in 16 forms, of which three are on list A and three on list A1, said the company’s director Radivoj Topalov, who came to this position from the director of Krka-Farma Belgrade.
According to him, the plan is for Ni Medic to register another 20 new drugs next year. The aforementioned acquisitions, investments in the registration of new drugs in Serbia, and the completion of the new factory in Zrenjanin will cost Luka Rajić, the owner of Pharmas, around 11 million euros. In addition to the mentioned investments in Serbia, there was also a lot of talk about the Croatian market at the press conference. It was stated that the completion of Pharmas’s factory in Popovača, as well as the company’s commercial operations, is expected to begin in early 2011. Activities on the product portfolio have already begun, with three-quarters of the planned 40 molecules from the C, A, and N therapeutic groups already in the registration process, said Antonija Žarak, the business development director, who spent 14 years at Pliva before joining Pharmas. With commercial activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where there are currently six files in registration, Pharmas also plans to start next year. All Pharmas drugs will not have new names, but their names will consist of the generic name of the drug plus the word Pharmas, to make it easier for pharmacists and doctors to remember, and the prices of the drugs, explained Vadran Čardžić, the marketing and sales director of Pharmas, will be set so that they appear on the list of drugs. Pharmas does not plan, at least not initially, to produce OTC drugs, but exclusively those that will be sold by prescription. (A.K.)
