With ACG as its partner and five major clients in its kitty, Dara Pharma Packaging is improving its clientele list. Alfred Terés, Sales Director, Chemical Engineer, Dara Pharmaceutical Packaging talks to Usha Sharma, about the company’s future growth prospects
How long have you been associated with ACG and how do you plan to strengthen the partnership?
Dara Pharma Packaging’s partnership with ACG started in June 2011. We have improved our partnership by providing training and specific knowledge about our lines and the aseptic filling to ACG sales engineers and after sales technicians. Nowadays, ACG is one of our best partners around the world.
Under the existing partnership, what services do you offer to the customers? Who are your clientele?
Mainly, we provide advisement to our customers. Sometimes the best service you can provide is to offer different options to carry on their projects. By listening to the specific demands of the customer, we can provide specific technical solutions further than just a simple machine. We have five big clients at the moment from India, with the list still growing.
Which therapeutic applications do you offer? Are there any new therapies in the pipeline?
We design, build and install machines for filling, closing, labelling vials, syringes, cartridge, eye drops and many new devices that time to time appear to improve actual therapies. Customers and material suppliers proposed new devices and we design the machines to make it possible.
Which services differentiate your company from the rest and are they cost effective?
We offer customised and cost-effective solutions compared to the rest of the global manufacturers. These solutions may result in saving space and time as well as offer flexibility and uniqueness to our customers.
What do customers expect from machinery manufacturers?
I think more and more customers expect to have a specific solution for their requirements. Maybe in the past it was more common to adapt the requirements of the customer to standard machines. Even that causes some inconvenience in space, real production demand or flexibility. It was very usual to have various machines for different applications even if they were just running partially or where many small machines run at multiple shifts making the production very inefficient. Now, customers like to have tailor-made solutions. They like to get maximum profit out of their investment from the space reserved for a determinate production.
What makes you feel that India will become a main market for the global pharma industry? How are you going to expand your presence further in India?
India has the intellectual expertise, trained cheap manpower, excellent infrastructure, requisite experience supplying to the regulated and semi-regulated markets, backed by an ambitious Indian government. Hence, all the necessary ingredients are in place. We will cater to an increasing requirement of formulations going off patent and waiting to be tapped for manufacturing in India. This in turn will provide us with the opportunity to increase our footprint in India.
Will India be a hub for Asia Pacific market to Dara Pharma?
Yes, all eyes are set on India, as they are set to overtake most emerging markets across the world.
What trends do you observe in the global pharma packaging market? How do Indian players fare and are they at par withe players in the developed nations?
New trends are ready-to-use devices, lines inside isolator just to improve sterility of the process, flexible line for multiple presentations of the same product, new devices. The pharma sector is still constantly evolving. I believe the Indian players (machinery manufacturers) have still some catching up to do with respect to quality and other deliverables expected from the customers. I am sure with time and exposure to European machineries, they would eventually be able to pace up things.
u.sharma@expressindia.com