Novo Nordisk To Construct One Of World’s Largest Insulin Plants In Tianjin, China, Biopharma Center

$400 million facility is Novo’s largest offshore investment.

BEIJING - The Danish-headquartered biopharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk is building a massive, $400 million insulin plant in the Chinese east coast city of Tianjin to serve diabetes patients across China and Asia, according to company executives and government officials.

"This will be the biggest insulin plant Novo Nordisk has ever built outside of Denmark," said Wang Peng, Novo Nordisk's communications manager in China. The funding for the insulin facility is also the largest overseas investment Novo Nordisk has made to expand its operations.

The state-of-the-art plant will produce a wide array of insulin products slated for the treatment of diabetics across the Asia-Pacific region. China has an estimated 40 million diabetics, along with more than 60 million more citizens with impaired glucose tolerance, which can lead to diabetes.

Novo Nordisk has an extensive diabetes product portfolio. The company, which has its headquarters in the Danish capital, set up its first insulin manufacturing base in Tianjin in 1996, and six years ago created a research and development center focusing on molecular biology, protein chemistry and cellular biology in the Chinese capital.

"The new insulin plant will begin operating in 2012, and will continue to be expanded through 2016," Wang Peng told PharmAsia News.

"The new Novo Nordisk insulin facility will be the largest pharmaceutical plant in Tianjin, and one of the biggest in China," said Phillip Wang, a government official at the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area.

Novo Nordisk's decision to create the advanced-technology insulin production base in Tianjin represented a milestone in the port city's drive to transform itself into one of China's most important centers for manufacturing pharmaceuticals and biotech products, Phillip Wang said.

TEDA authorities are in the process of drafting a five-year plan - scheduled to be launched in 2009 - to make Tianjin a pharma powerhouse, he said.

"We will offer a range of incentives to encourage the pharmaceutical companies to set up operations or expand in Tianjin," he said in an interview. Those incentives will include government subsidies for major new projects and preferential tax policies.

"TEDA is now constructing a new district [in Tianjin] for the biopharmaceutical sector," which the government has marked as one of its four pillar industries, he added.

The five-year plan to nurture the pharmaceutical industry in Tianjin is set to be published in December, Phillip Wang explained.

The development zone official said he welcomed an announcement over the weekend by China's State Council, or premier's office, that the government was in the process of crafting a RMB4 trillion ($586 billion) stimulus package to boost economic growth rates in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. "TEDA should receive a share of funds from the stimulus plan to foster the pharmaceutical sector here," he said.

Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk is moving forward with its plan to join forces with the World Health Organization and with China's National Center for Drug Screening to help identify new drug candidates for infectious tropical diseases that affect people in poor countries.

Novo Nordisk is donating a license to the drug screening center to use the company's small molecule compound library. The library, which includes a collection of 325,000 chemical compounds used in early stage pharmaceutical research and an associated database will be jointly explored by the WHO, the Chinese screening center and Novo Nordisk in China for tropical disease treatments (¹ (Also see "Novo Nordisk Donates License For Small-Molecule Compound Library To China, WHO" - Scrip, 15 May, 2008.)).

"Novo Nordisk shipped the small-molecule library to China in late October," said company spokesman Wang Peng.

"This is just part of Novo Nordisk's expanding cooperation with Chinese health organizations and with the China Academy of Sciences aimed at enhancing China's research in the pharmaceutical sector," he added.

- Kevin Holden ([email protected])

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