Fairway to invest $15 m for Sri Lanka’s first saline manufacturing facility

Wednesday, 4 November 2015 00:39 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Charumini de Silva

Capitalising on the booming healthcare industry, Fairway Holdings subsidiary Fair Health Ltd. confirmed that it would invest over $15 million to set up Sri Lanka’s first intravenous solutions manufacturing facility.

The firm has partnered with a Japanese expert to set up Sri Lanka’s first saline facility inPadukka, Fairway Holdings Chairman Hemaka de Alwis told the Daily FT.

Commenting on the current status, he stated that the project was currently in the investment stage, where they were in the process ofraising debt, negotiating the purchase of plant and equipment, obtaining planning and regulatory approvals.

“We will be starting constructionwork in three months’time and we hope to start production by the first quarter of 2017,” he added.

He assured that the facility would be set up in line with World Health Organization(WHO) Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) as well as US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards with state-of-the-art technology.

The facility has a capacity of manufacturing 21 million litres of saline per annum, whereas the Sri Lankan market requirement is only fourtofive million litres per annum.

“Our primary focus is to cater to the export market. Already we have received confirmed orders from other Asian countriesand there are some inquiries from other GCC countries as well. We also intend to supply to the local market,” he noted.

Elaborating on expansion plans in the pharmaceuticals industry, de Alwis asserted that they were looking for partnerships to manufacture drugs.

“Our actual interest in getting into pharmaceuticals is to manufacture drugs and devices. At the moment Pakistan and Bangladesh are doing it in a large scale with very limited resources. I think with the proper infrastructure and monitoring processes in place, Sri Lanka should be able to do better,” he noted.