Syringe manufacturers ramp up capacity

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, January 7

Even as the government prepares to administer Covid-19 vaccine to the people, syringe manufacturers are ramping up their capacities to meet the overwhelming demand.

Despite being a pharmaceutical manufacturing hub there were not many syringe manufacturers in the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh industrial area which is acclaimed as Asia’s pharmaceutical hub.

Nihal Health Care, Baddi, a leading syringe manufacturer of the area, has invested an additional Rs 1 crore to enhance his manufacturing capacity in view of the increasing demand of syringes globally.

The company specializes in disposable syringe applicable in almost all fields of therapy and has been operating since 2007.

“As against the manufacture of 10 lakh syringes on a daily basis, the plant capacity is being enhanced to about 12 lakh per day to meet the overwhelming demand for syringes in view of the Covid pandemic. Machinery worth Rs 1 crore has been ordered to ramp up production and it is expected to be installed by February end or beginning of March”, informed Gurbhej Singh, company’s Managing Director.

“Syringe manufacturing is undertaken both through the manual mode as well on auto loader basis and our focus is to manufacture syringes of 0.5 ml and 1 ml auto disable (AD) which are likely to be used for Covid-19 vaccination”, informed Singh.

The company also exports syringes to various nations like the UAE and several European countries.

Manufacturers are also eying exports in view of spurt in global demand to vaccinate the people.

Manufacturers say that more syringe manufacturers could set up plants in the BBN area if a medical devices park was sanctioned under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan of Prime Minister. The state government has forcefully pleaded its case before the Union government to secure one such park in Himachal.

They added that since the profitability was low in syringe manufacturing not many investors preferred to opt for it in the backwaters of the BBN.

Manufacturers were, however, skeptical about investing more for syringe manufacturing as they feel that spurt in demand was a temporary phase. They cited the example of face masks and sanitisers whose manufacturers incurred losses after temporary spurt in demand when the pandemic had peaked.