Generics grow 19% a year and attract foreign producers
O Estado de S. Paulo 05/14/2009
Six months ago, Swiss Stefan Prebil, executive of Sandoz, the Novartis pharmaceutical division of generics, was assigned a mission. He would leave the command of one of the most important operations of the company - in its head office, in Switzerland - and go to Brazil, where Sandoz arrived two years ago. The transference of one of the main officers of the multinational company to the Country begins making sense when we analyze the performance of the company here. In two years, the Brazilian market went from the 13th to the 7th place among the biggest markets of Sandoz.
Turning the eyes to the emerging countries, as does Sandoz/Novartis, has been the strategy of many multinational companies of the sector, which, traditionally, have always had their income related to the markets of North America, Europe and Japan. Brazil appears in an even clearer way in the radar of the companies thanks to the success of the industry of generics that grows at a two-digit level for more than five years, after the Government regulated its production in 1999. But generic drugs are not the only engine of such activity. "The little explored market which is more stable and transparent than China's and India's makes Brazil the current trend in the sector", affirms Luís Madasi, leader in services for the pharmaceutical industry of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Brazil is already the biggest market among the emerging markets for French Sanofi-Aventis. A little more than a month ago, it strengthened its position with the purchase of Medley, a laboratory specialized in generic drugs, of Campinas (SP). So far, the company had a residual participation in the segment, of 3%. With Medley, it went to 41%. And together with that, it reached the leadership in earnings among the largest pharmaceutical companies of the Country. "The generic drugs will not stop growing so soon. They have nearly 15% of the market in the Country and may even reach 30%", says the managing director of Sanofi-Aventis in Brazil, Heraldo Marchezini.