An Executive Country Review: South East Asia An ... - EC Reviews

nating the OTC market, the energy drinks,
and the nutrition market and is number
three in the Indonesian prescription market
with a 9% market share.
The next Indonesian players are Dexa
Medica and Sanbe Farma, both with
�$152-million revenues that benefited
from truly impressive revenue growth
rates of 35% and 28.6%, respectively.
These companies are also strong prescription
generics producers. Dexa Medica is a
producer of solid and liquid forms, particularly
injections. The company has expended
the range of its offer notably by
striking partnership agreements with
some of the world’s most renowned
pharmaceutical players, producing and
distributing their products under license
throughout Indonesia. Sanbe Farma, on
the other hand, is moving beyond its original
core activities of human and veterinary
pharmaceutical manufacturing and is financing
a biotech and research center as
well as managing a brand new, state-ofthe-art
private hospital in Bandung.
Despite an impressive presence on their
home turfs, all three companies have initiated
international market expansion
strategies starting across the region, in
Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar as well
as Africa, Nigeria in particular. “This
densely populated African nation (132
million people) is attractive to Indonesian
companies as the two countries share market
characteristics, from the fact that most
of the population relies on a very low disposable
income through to the fact that
both markets are volume rather than value
based.
In terms of innovation, Kalbe Farma,
Dexa Medica, and Sanbe Farma are at the
edge of the sector. From Sanbe’s state-ofthe-art
new CGMP sterile injection plant
and new dry forms tablet plant to Kalbe’s
Kalbiotech, a Singapore-based entity that
will work on research coordination and licensing
in Singapore and Dexa’s successful
in-licensing and even out-licensing deals,
Pharmaceutical Technology SEPTEMBER 2006 79