Sandoz Group AG says Europe's medicines regulator may remove amoxicillin from its list of critical medicines, threatening the last European factory producing the antibiotic from scratch.
Richard Saynor, Sandoz CEO, warned the company is "literally on one minute to midnight" over continuing penicillin production in Europe. The Kundl, Austria plant — the only European facility making penicillin end-to-end — received €50 million ($56 million) in public funding less than three years ago to modernize and reduce reliance on Chinese and Indian suppliers.
Despite capacity for 240 million packages annually, the plant operates at just over half capacity due to cheap imports. Prices for amoxicillin active pharmaceutical ingredients have plunged 56% since January last year.
Sandoz filed an anti-dumping complaint with the European Commission in May over Chinese imports, calling for a "level playing field." The EU is finalizing regulations to incentivize local medicine production, with critical medicines deliberations continuing through next month.
Source: Bloomberg Markets · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing