RIL to invest another Rs 1,000cr in its drug manufacturing facilit

New Delhi, Dec 11 (UNI) Reliance Life Sciences today said the company will invest another Rs 1,000 crore in the next one year for setting up four world-class manufacturing facilities for drugs and pharmaceuticals.

''We have already invested Rs 1,500 crore for this project. We will undertake contract manufacturing for both domestic consumption and exports,'' company sources told UNI.

The project will be dovetailed into Reliance Industries Ltd's retail venture, added the sources.

As part of this, many of Reliance retail outlets would have pharmacy stores through which the company's branded generic drugs will be sold.

The company embarked on indigeneous research and development of plasma proteins and also built a pilot scale facility in Mumbai, compliant to Indian and international standards (WHO-GMP) for manufacturing these proteins indegeneously. This is the only facility in India for manufacturing plasma proteins, the sources said.

Based on these efforts, the company introduced several plasma proteins - Albumin (AlbuRel), Intravenous Immunoglobulin (ImmunoRel), Factor VIII (HemoRel) and Fibrin sealant (ReliSeal), etc.

On November 29, 2006, a rare surgery for Total Knee Replacement was performed at a hospital in Delhi in which the patient was a hemophilliac (patients with a deficiency of Factor VIII in their blood) which results in serious blood clotting disorders.

Such a surgery on a hemophilliac patient was made possible due to the availabilty of Anti-Hemophilliac Factor VIII from Reliance Life Sciences, the sources said.

This is very significant, considering that until recently plasma proteins including Factor VIII were totally imported to the country, they added.

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