Integrated Medical Industries (IMI), a company manufacturing self-destruct syringes in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, is expanding to hit the target of 1.3 billion syringes per year.
The chairman of IMI and Rivers State commissioner of health, Tamuno Sam Parker, also disclosed that the company has planned a $27 million expansion to hit the new target.
The target also includes one billion hypodermic needles, 105 million intravenous (IV) giving sets, and 90 million IV solutions per annum.
IMI currently produces about 160 million syringes a year.
According to him, the IMI is the first manufacturer of medical equipment in sub-Saharan Africa and the 18th in the world to win the converted World Health Organisation PQS, which is the highest standard in the world.
The commissioner disclosed these in Vienna, Austria while speaking at the first test-run of the IMI power plant built by General Electric (GE) Jenbacher GMBH & Co, a subsidiary of General Electric, where the IMI chairman said Rivers State was developing an alternative economy that would compete with the current oil-based economy.
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Parker said, “Oil has been good to Nigeria and the Rivers people but Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi believes that the best way to sustain the development of Rivers State is to develop an economy that is independent of oil. This is why we have invested heavily on manufacturing, farming, education, health and energy.”
He said the power plant would deliver 14 megawatts of electricity to IMI and the manufacturing plants in Port Harcourt, describing the GE 624 engine as top of the range and first to be commissioned in Africa for the first time when it is installed at the IMI factory in Port Harcourt early next year.
IMI is a company jointly owned by the Rivers State and the Federal Government, but the commissioner said it is, however, currently financed wholly by the Rivers State government. Teams from Rivers State inspected the plants. Jenbacher was bought in 2003 by G E, a company founded by Thomas Edison which has been operating in Austria for about 800 years. It is being represented by Clerk Energy in Nigeria.
