"Pliva" plans to open production unit in Serbia ?

"Pliva", which became part of American "Barr group" last year, is currently authorized for 30 European markets within the group and it realizes production in America, Croatia, Czech Republic and Poland.

- We honestly hope that we will be able to say in year or two that we have production units in Serbia - said Igor Kosec, Regional Manager of Croatian "Pliva", at the meeting of Croatian Business Club in Belgrade, while speaking about global trends in the domain of pharmaceutical industry.

Pointing out that global milieu exerts largest influence on pharmaceutical industry, Kosec announced that "Pliva" would turn to biogenerics and he expressed expectation that the first biogenerics developed by "Pliva" would appear on Serbian market within 3 years.

Speaking about trends in pharmaceutical industry, Kosec pointed out that the last few years of development of pharmaceutical industry are characterized by large acquisitions, that is, takeovers and mergers, which reduced borders between generic and innovative companies.

- For example, there were only 10 acqisitions in 1995, while number of acquisitions in 2004 reached 71 and it kept on growing. But, it is important to point out that productivity of research and development is definitely decreasing, although investments are bigger. Some 12 years ago, in 1995, 53 new molecules appeared, while there were only 28 new molecules in 2005, which raises the question whether there is still something left for pharmaceutical industry to discover?- Kosec explained.

Among the rest, Kosec pointed out that global trends in generic operations were such that the patent protection in Europe was smaller every year. That trend, as he said, will be continued until 2018 when the market would have to invent something new.

Kosec saw the way out from this situation in biogenerics.