Indonesia's pharmaceutical company Kimia Farma to build new plant

Indonesia's state-run pharmaceutical company PT Kimia Farma plans to build a 100 million U.S. dollars plant this year to help reduce its dependency on imported raw materials, local press said Thursday.

The company has claimed that 98 percent of its raw materials for the making of medicines were still imported. The location of the new plant has not yet decided..

To help finance the construction, Kimia Farma is negotiating with investors from China and India, reported English daily The Jakarta Post.

"We only have several small-sized plants to produce raw materials for our medicine. We want to add capacity by setting up a new plant outside Java because of the abundant resource availability," president director Sjamsul Arifin was quoted as saying.

Kimia Farma last year booked sales of 2.3 trillion rupiah (around 250.03 million dollars).

The company is also the country's largest drugstore chain, possessing 350 pharmacies equipped with clinics and laboratories, as well as 40 distribution offices throughout the country.

Source : news.xinhuanet.com