Indian pharmaceutical company Jodas Expoim is being prevented from starting construction of an oncology drug plant in Chertanovo

The Indian pharmaceutical company Jodas Expoim has been unable to begin construction in the south of Moscow on the site of an inactive porcelain factory for almost two years, its first enterprise in the Russian Federation for the production of oncological drugs worth over 4 billion rubles. Officials are delaying the procedures for approving the project, which the company reported to Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, asking him to speed up the process. Other pharmaceutical manufacturers create their facilities in the Moscow technopolis owned by the mayor’s office, where, according to them, all permits are issued promptly.

Kommersant has obtained a letter from the director of Omni-Service, owned by Jodas Expoim, Shashi Shankar Parsad Singh, dated November 10, addressed to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, in which it is reported that the Moskomarkhitektura (MKA) is delaying the approval of permitting documentation for the construction of production facilities. This department, according to the company, “continues to unreasonably obstruct” the issuance of a permit. They indicate that from August 2023 they cannot agree on an architectural and urban planning solution (AGR), without which the start of construction cannot be agreed upon.

Omni-Service writes that at the last meeting at the MCA on November 10, a representative of the department said that the company’s application for approval of the AGR was not reviewed in the required time frame due to a technical failure, and demanded that it be submitted again – for the fourth time. The company asks Sergei Sobyanin to speed up the approval process. The Moscow Architecture Committee and the mayor’s press service did not respond to Kommersant’s request.

The Russian representative office of Jodas Expoim told Kommersant that at the beginning of 2022 they acquired Omni-Service, which owns an unfinished production of porcelain products with a total area of ​​7.5 thousand square meters. m in Chertanovo in the south of Moscow. They added that in the second quarter of 2022 they entered into a preliminary agreement with contractors who must complete the construction of the facility and connect it to utility networks.

Omni-Service planned to begin construction of the plant and warehouse at the end of 2022, and to launch production in 2024. It is expected that the Jodas Expoim structure will produce oncological drugs and biosimilars at the enterprise – 500 thousand bottles of liquid forms and 11.3 million tablets and capsules per year. The planned investment volume is 4.36 billion rubles.

DSM Group CEO Sergei Shulyak explains the delay in the start of the project by a lack of coordination within the relevant departments of the mayor’s office. This may become a deterrent for pharmaceutical companies considering the possibility of creating their production facilities in Moscow. In recent years, investors have preferred to create pharmaceutical production facilities from scratch rather than rebuild existing enterprises, notes Nikolai Bespalov, development director at RNC Pharma.

At the same time, in recent years, the capital’s authorities have constantly talked about supporting initiatives to create new pharmaceutical production facilities in the city. During this time, a number of companies, including R-Pharm, Biocad, Bright Way Industries, Oncotarget, did create their own facilities, but in the Moscow technopolis, controlled by the mayor’s office. Biocad told Kommersant that they received permission to build their plant in the technology park in a short time and its construction was completed on time.

The Moscow facility should become the first Jodas Expoim plant in Russia. According to the state register of medicines, 80 drugs produced in India are registered under its Russian “daughter”. Jodas Expoim itself now has three factories around the world and plans to open five more, including two in the Russian Federation (in addition to Moscow in Voskresensk near Moscow), the company reported. They say that they are ready to invest 4.3 billion rubles in a plant near Moscow for the production of antimicrobial, radiocontrast drugs and other intensive care products.

The development of Jodas Expoim projects in the Russian Federation probably began even before the hostilities in Ukraine, but this does not negate the general understanding by pharmaceutical manufacturers from friendly countries of the prospects for localizing production in Russia, Nikolai Bespalov believes. According to Mr. Shulyak, foreign pharmaceutical companies are being pushed to localize in the Russian Federation by the “second wheel” principle being launched, when in government procurement preference will be given to drugs produced within the country.

Polina Gritsenko