Chasing Bioton

Pharmaceutical producer Polfa Tarchomin (PT) plans to challenge human-insulin market leader Bioton.

In its first year of insulin production, PT managed to win two percent of the Polish market. By comparison, it took Bioton two years to reach a similar presence on the market. PT president Dariusz Sobczak promises that the company will develop sales, increase production, and expand on foreign markets.

"We are considering entering the European market and Arab states," he told Puls Biznesu. Until now PT has only produced animal insulin, which it exports to Vietnam and Belarus.

The Warsaw-based pharmaceutical producer also plans to continue its expansion in China, where it sells medicines for upper-respiratory illnesses.

"We want to double this result in 2007," Sobczak announced, adding that new forms of its antibiotic are currently being registered there.

PT also wants to modernize its dosage facility and build a new tablet-producing plant. As Sobczak explained, construction of the facility should start in the second half of 2007 and be completed within a year and a half, at a cost of zł.120-130 million.