US drug maker Eli Lilly and Co Tuesday celebrated the groundbreaking ceremony for its third insulin plant in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province, in a bid to further expand its presence in the country's growing diabetes treatment market.
The new plant, with total investment of 2 billion yuan ($323 million), is a part of Eli Lilly's $700 million initiative to expand its global insulin capacity.
Designed as an insulin filling project, the new plant is expected to start operation in 2017. The first two plants in Suzhou were built in 1996 and 2009.
Besides the three plants, the company also has a research center in Shanghai, which was opened in 2012. The center is dedicated to diabetes treatment research.
Diabetes affects 114 million people in China, over 8 percent of the total population, media said.
Foreign drug makers account for around 80 percent of the diabetes treatment market in China - led by Danish firm Novo Nordisk, and Eli Lilly and Sanofi-Aventis ranking second and third, according to Zhong Hongyue, a pharmaceutical analyst at consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.
Zhong noted that competition is fierce and domestic drug makers like Tonghua Dongbao Pharmaceutical are also catching up fast.
"To further localize production could help to bring down costs," Zhong told the Global Times.
Eli Lilly has experienced downsizing globally as several of its major medicines lost patent protection starting from 2011, but John Lechleiter, chairman of the company, said that investment to China will remain "robust."
As with other emerging markets, the Chinese healthcare market also slowed down in the past two years, but it still remains one of the fastest growing, Lechleiter said at a press briefing on Tuesday, noting that the Chinese healthcare market will report "low double-digit growth" in the next five years.
On March 5, Eli Lilly announced that it has extended the cooperation with Novast Laboratories Ltd in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, to expand the production of branded generics in China.
Lechleiter said that branded generics complement its product portfolio, but the company's business will remain "centered on innovative new medicines" and "does not represent a shift of strategy."
