Bahamas News

A Freeport, Bahamas based manufacturing company will in two weeks time begin talks with a South African pharmaceutical firm about a joint venture to take the active ingredients it makes for antiretroviral drugs into that nations market.

Randy Thompson, administration and business services manager for PharmaChem Technologies, said talks that also involved the Freeport company’s joint venture partner, Gilead Sciences, the Nasdaq 100-listed firm, were set to begin in the week beginning February 14.

If successful, they could see the Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate (TDF) manufactured by PharmaChem for use in drugs such as Viread and Truvada, taken into the South African market, where they would be given to a formulator for launch.

PharmaChem acquired the former Syntex site in Freeport in September 2003, basing its factory on 62 acres with another 40 left undeveloped.

A joint venture between an Italian investor, who provided the management team and expertise, with the Grand Bahama Port Authority as minority shareholder. PharmaChem provides contract manufacturing services to Gilead supplying it with bulk active ingredients for its anti-HIV and hepatitis drug treatments.

We’re currently expanding the plant to have the capacity to treat over one million people annually, Mr Thompson said, We should be in a position to treat one million people by June/July this year. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the plant in 2004.

Mr Thompson said PharmaChem had provided opportunities for qualified Bahamians to come back home and find work. More than 95 per cent of employees, including four of the six senior managers, were Bahamian, and the company was due to advertise shortly for more process engineers.

PharmaChem’s product was used in 92 countries, including the Bahamas, and the company was able to achieve cost-effective production by bringing in the ingredients it needed through Freeport’s Container Port.

Meanwhile, W Albert Gray, the Grand Bahama Port Authority’s president, said he would have ready in one month the first draft of the concessions the organization wanted to ask the Government for when the property tax concessions offered by the Hawksbill Creek Agreement expired in 2015.

The draft will be presented to Sir Jack Hayward, the Port Authority’s co-chair.

By Neil Hartnell
Tribune Business Editor