Turkish pharma Abdi Ibrahim to invest $150M in 2021

By Musab Turan

ISTANBUL (AA) - Leading Turkish pharmaceutical firm Abdi Ibrahim is working to realize its $150 million investment plan in the imminent year, a senior company official said on Friday.

Suha Taspolatoglu, the CEO of Abdi Ibrahim, told Anadolu Agency that the firm will continue its domestic investments in 2021 and the new investments for production facilities will be on its agenda.

Stressing that the company had aimed to increase its production capacity to 500 million boxes in 2020, Taspolatoglu said Abdi Ibrahim reached around 420 million boxes as of today.

"We have reached approximately 80% of our target. When the investments of our new production facility are completed, our actual production capacity will reach 750 million boxes by 2022."

The firm bought 28.5% of the shares of Swiss-based biotech company OM Pharma for 4.2 billion liras ($530 million) in September, making it the first Turkish pharmaceutical company to be a partner to a western pharmaceutical firm.

With the OM Pharma partnership, Abdi Ibrahim aims to develop new biotechnological products thanks to a fund of 250 million Swiss Francs ($282.5 million) that will be allocated to biotechnology R&D in the next five years, Taspolatoglu said.

The company has the opportunity to manufacture some products on OM Pharma's chemical-pharmaceutical portfolio at the facilities in Esenyurt, Istanbul, and export them to the world markets, he added.

He also underlined that thanks to the partnership with OM Pharma, Abdi Ibrahim plans to enter Latin America, China and the US pharmaceutical markets and to grow by selling and marketing OM Pharma's products in the markets where Abdi Ibrahim is already active but OM Pharma not.

*Writing by Yunus Girgin in Ankara