The pharmaceutical industry in Nigeria is the most vibrant in the West African sub-region with an estimated market size of $1.8bn. Biogaran, a leading French pharmaceutical company recently acquires Swisspha, a pharmaceutical company based in Lagos. PASCHAL BRIERE, president of Biogaran spoke to Stephen Onyekwelu and Anthonia Obokoh about how they intend to transform the generic drug market. Excerpts:
Tell us a little about yourself?
I am Pascal Briere, a pharmacist and graduate of the University of Paris. I have thirty years’ experience in Pharmaceuticals and created two companies in France. The first one was named Qualimed, a portfolio of injectable products for hospitals and the second one was Biogaran, twenty years ago. Biogaran was created in 1996 with Qualimed Company in Brazil five years ago and now Swipha Pharmacy which is our first investment in Africa.
Can you tell us briefly what you are here to do in Nigeria?
We are here to develop Swipha. It has suffered a lot during the last four years, a very sharp decrease in turn over, huge losses; cash crunch, the current economic situation and dollar scarcity combined to make things even worse. So we are here to rejuvenate and implement a full restart of the Swipha brand and products.
Swipha is the first company to be approved by the world health organisation in Nigeria and to have been granted ISO 9001. These are fantastic assets; in addition to being a great brand, it has underlying assets such as factory, local content, good reputation and quality.
We want to develop the company, we want to increase the reach of the brand, we want to better reach the physician, better reach the pharmacist, better reach the distributors and we want to even increase the local production. We have a lot of prospects for Swipha. We are industrial pharmacists and not financial people, so our goal is to develop Swipha and to make it both profitable and successful in the long run.
In the World Bank’s ranking of countries on the ease doing business, 2017, Nigeria was ranked 169 out of 190 countries. Why did you choose to come to Nigeria then?
Nigeria is known by people outside Nigeria as a risky country, we as a group are aware of this perception. We are here to earn money as well but we do not see Nigeria as a risk, we see Nigeria as an opportunity because as everybody sees Nigeria as a risk, nobody is investing, not a lot of people in pharmaceuticals are investing in Nigeria.
There is an imperative for a company like us to invest in Nigeria and develop pure pharmaceutical quality generic and branded generic and original pharmaceutical drugs. The market is huge and the need for affordable medicine is enormous.
We have investments in Brazil which is not an easy country as well, so we are used to it and we have big backlog of success in France obviously. There are many opportunities here, so we love Nigeria.
With this agreement, what drugs are you looking at?
There are two kinds of products within the product of Swipha the central nervous system drugs (CNF) which are very strong franchise; we are going to develop that franchise for the physicians and for the patients.
There is an antibiotic franchise where Swipha is also very strong, so we are going to develop as well this antibiotic franchise and there is obviously Swidar which is Fansidar and it is a very famous product as Swipha product. It is an anti-malarial product and we going to develop this franchise as well.
In addition, we are going to develop a second range, which will be cardiovascular products, anti-cholesterols products and more commodity products that will be available in many distribution, pharmaceuticals and patients.
We know that Nigeria is a very cyclic country we are now at the bottom of the cycle, there are signs of recovery we have been told, we do strongly expect the economy to recover to some extent probably by the second quarter depending on dollar availability and a lot of other factors but we have been told that Nigeria is a great country and her people are able to focus themselves and go very straight to success and Nigerians are very energetic.
Once we have succeeded in Nigeria then we could work on West Africa expecting products from our factory here which is fantastic and exporting to countries around such as Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin Republic. There is a lot of prospect but it needs time and we have time. We are not in a hurry.
Are you really making any financial investment with Swipha?
Yes of course, we will buy the company and its shares. These are investments and we are going to invest more but we need to resume services as soon as possible, there is no inventory due to cash crunch and dollar scarcity so we have to resume inventory first, this is an investment. We have to import goods and we have to import active ingredients too.
We need to resuscitate the factory, and develop enough capacity here. We have spare space around which is quite big so we have room enough to expand the factory if needed.
Can we place some value on this investment?
I need to keep it confidential but what I can tell you is that there were big losses and we are taking all of the losses and the debt and we have paid for that and I hope that the banking system will help us in rejuvenating Swipha and will strongly help us to have dollar that we will be needing to import goods. So it will be a very good test as well for the bankers if they want to accompany the development of the economy or not.
What is your outlook for the Nigeria Pharmaceutical industry?
There are three or four companies that have good standards of quality, business, factories and knowledge so you have a pharmaceutical industry which may develop squarely here because the middle class will increase in Nigeria and access to medicine I am quite sure will increase by much in the next decade.
We are in Nigeria to make a difference by manufacturing quality products. I trust the market will rise by 10 percent every year especially if the economy rebounds and there are good prospects for those doing a good job in the next ten years, there will be no room for those that are not doing a great job.
Are there other sectors you would be looking at in Nigeria’s health industry?
No, we are concentrating on pharmaceuticals and there are really a whole lot to do with Swipha, there is really a huge work here to rejuvenate the company and the brand and everything, so let us focus on Swipha, let us focus on our pharmacist, physician and so on and then within three years, if we are successful we will be more than happy.
So Nigeria should be expecting more generic drugs?
Yes, we are going to bring Nigeria a huge range of generic products based on our values of quality and affordability to the patients. I think it is a great opportunity and adventure to start with Nigeria and with Nigerians as well. It is fantastic.
