Generic-drugs maker Aurobindo Pharma Ltd has become one of the first major generic companies to sign an agreement with the global Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) for the manufacture of several antiretroviral medicines.
Under the agreement, Aurobindo will manufacture products licensed to the Pool by Gilead Sciences in July: emtricitabine (FTC), cobicistat (COBI), elvitegravir (EVG), and the fixeddose combination of these medicines known as the Quad (a combination of FTC, COBI, EVG, and tenofovir).
Aurobindo has chosen to take advantage of a key provision negotiated by the Pool so it can sell tenofovir to a larger number of countries and without paying royalties.
“We are pleased with the rapid uptake of our first licences by generic companies,” said Medicines Patent Pool Executive Director Ellen’t Hoen. “Generic medicines producers have a key role to play in ensuring the availability of low cost medicines for the treatment of HIV.”
 “We are excited about both the public health and business opportunities provided by the Patent Pool licences. Aurobindo looks forward to increasing its manufacture of HIV-related products, and expanding its work to cover promising new treatments, for the millions of people living with HIV across the globe,” said P V Ramaprasad Reddy, chairman of Aurobindo.
The Medicines Patent Pool, founded with the support of UNITAID in 2010, aims to bring down the prices of HIV medicines, and stimulate the development of needed new formulations, through access-oriented voluntary licences. MPP negotiates with patent holders to share their intellectual property with the Pool, and then licenses it to other producers to facilitate the production of affordable generic medicines well-adapted for use in resource-poor settings.
The Pool signed its first licence agreement with a pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences, in July 2011, securing several public-health related improvements on the status quo for voluntary licences.
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Process Plant & Equipment companies should capitalize on emerging project opportunities
 According to several speakers at the AGM, many project opportunities were emerging in India in fertilizers, petrochemicals, power, nuclear and other fields and also in our neighbourhood in the Middle East and SE Asia, which our plant and equipment companies should try and take advantage of. To achieve this, the Chief Guest, R G Rajan, Chairman & Managing Director of RCF exhorted Indian companies to develop self belief and self confidence, invest in R&D and nurture our own people in the knowledge economy, while Tipnis of Afcons, in his address later on, advocated a consortia approach of EPC and equipment companies together to bid for projects, particularly overseas. The outgoing chairman of PPMAI, C M Venkateswaran spoke of the larger role that PPMAI has to play in the wake of the country expected to grow at around 8%.
Fertilizer Scenario
In his address, Rajan, speaking on the fertilizer scenario lamented that India has become a net importer of all three main fertilizers. He said that while we were always dependant on imports for potassic fertilizers, we are now importing annually about 7.5 mtpa of urea and 7 mtpa of diammonium phosphate.
He regretted that there was no investment in greenfield fertilizer projects in recent times and the only one announced recently was by the Matix Group in West Bengal. Rajan said that India must set up fertilizer projects within India or abroad, where there was access to rawmaterials. He anticipated a more investment and industry friendly fertilizer policy soon based on policy changes the government was working on.
His company RCF was setting up 2 brown field projects, he revealed, one for ammonia / urea at Thal in Maharashtra, for which they were at the bid evaluation stage. In addition, RCF was also planning to put up a SSP plant at Thal. He said that RCF was also considering two overseas projects – an ammonia/urea plant in Ghana and a coal based urea plant in Indonesia. He suggested that India should shift more to SSP as an alternative to costly DAP.
Efforts were on for revival of some of the closed fertilizer plants in the country. The other brownfield project RCF is involved is, alongwith GAIL and Coal India as a consortia for reviving the fertilizer plant at Talcher through the coal gasification route. Needing an investment of `8000 crore, about six expressions of interest have been received, he added. Apart from plans in fertilizer projects both in India and abroad, many other fertilizer companies were also planning manufacture of customized fertilizers, he indicated.
PPMAI’s evolving role
Earlier, while welcoming the guests, C M Venkateswaran expressed enormous satisfaction in the qualitative enhancement of PPMAI activities during his 2 year tenure.
C E Fernandes, the newly elected chairman of PPMAI spoke of the cluster development programme initiated to help SMEs who were facing many problems. He was critical of SMEs being penalized by PSUs, particularly the oil PSUs who impound the earnest deposit of SMEs, for project delays, which he blamed was mainly due to the inability of PSUs to obtain approvals in time. To sort out such disputes, Fernandes pleaded for the appointment of an arbitrator.
In another presentation Prof Kannan Iyer of IIT-B spoke on the merits and demerits of fast breeders, particularly on India’s attempt to use thorium as a fuel.
In the AGM, Anil K Modi, general manager-manufacturing, Larsen & Toubro Ltd, Heavy Engineering Division, Mumbai and Vernon Francis Correa, member of the board & director-projects, Tecnimont ICB Pvt Ltd, Mumbai were also elected as Deputy Chairman for the year 2011-12.
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Exploring acquisitions and partnerships
Lloyd’s Register (LR), the global independent risk management and safety assurance organization, which has been in India since the last 137 years, is expecting its nonmarine business (70% of current revenues) to grow significantly. Lloyds Register is expecting its current annual turnover of 860 million pounds to double by 2015. Announcing this at its first ever major press conference in India, in Mumbai recently, Richard Sadler, CEO of the Lloyd’s Group said that Lloyd’s Register was looking at acquisitions and partnerships in India to complement its organic growth
Starting off as a ship classification company in 1760, in England, Lloyd’s Register expertise now covers shipping, transportation (mainly rail), energy, general industry and manufacturing and management systems. From oil fields and pipelines to refineries, power stations and manufacturing plants, LR helps businesses around the world to improve safety reliability and performance of their assets. LR with its independent status has impeccable credentials of integrity and expert asset knowledge.
World’s largest certification company
 Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) is one of the world’s largest international certification bodies, provides certification, verification and management systems audits in key areas of quality, environment, health and safety, information security, business continuity, carbon management, sustainability and emission management, supply chain assurance and risk based management. Across India, LR is the leading independent assurance company providing services to sectors such as power, refineries, oil and gas. They have been associated with the world’s largest single site refinery that of Reliance Industries at Jamnagar. LR is involved with almost all leading power projects in India. LR is providing third party assurance to Chinese power infrastructure being incorporated efficiently and safely into Indian power stations. Recently, LR became the only private company for inspection and certifying boilers in India, as appointed by the Central Boiler Inspectorate of the Government of India.
Insight on emerging scenarios
Addressing the press, Richard Sadler said that LR’s deep and intimate involvement with crucial sectors of the global economy provides them a keen insight and strategic understanding of the directions these sectors are taking. Sadler remarked that shipping, energy, transport, water are critical interrelated infrastructure areas society needs which in turn impacts food, health, security and environment. “India”, he remarked, “encompasses everything we want to cover.”
Reeling out possible emerging scenarios, Sadler said that shipping will increasingly move out from private sector and come under government control. He said that India needed to have a long term strategic thinking on shipping. He expects public transport to become very important in times to come. He pointed to the example of China which has a scorching 70% growth in railways which in turn necessitates better safety technologies and systems. Emerging economies, he said need safe, sustainable and low carbon transportation systems like railways.
Huge lifecycle capability
Speaking on LR’s huge life cycle capability, Sadler said that LR could help in the entire global energy supply chain from upstream to downstream. He spoke of LR’s huge capability in the nuclear field from its supply chain, full life cycle of facilities from concept to commissioning, operations and decommissioning.
He advocated the benefits of using nuclear energy and said that people should be convinced of its safety. Responding to a question from Chemical Industry Digest, he said that the future scenario would include a mix of energy sources where nuclear energy and renewables will play an important part which was essential to meet future energy demand and as well as in reducing the carbon load in the atmosphere. By 2030, the world will be using 50% more energy than it does today. Shale gas discoveries could change the energy paradigm radically, Sadler pointed out. At the same time, Sadler lamented the enormous wastage in our current methods of usage of electricity, which has to change, he said.
LR is increasing the number of offices in India from 22 to 30 and doubling the staff strength from 230 in the next five years.
Earlier, Peter Beckingham, British Deputy High Commissioner, who graced the occasion said that UK attached the greatest importance to trade and investment with India. He said that the two way trade between the two countries now touched 12 billion pounds a year.
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Dassault Systemes, world leader in 3D and ProductLifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, signed two agreements on October 4th , during the visit of their President & CEO, Bernard Charles to India.
 One is a strategic alliance with PL Engineering (PLE), a subsidiary of Punj Lloyd Ltd, to jointly promote and market Dassault Systemes Version 6 software solutions and PLE’s services solutions to customers in oil & gas, power (nuclear & thermal), chemicals, petrochemicals, biofuels, industrial plant design, equipment manufacturing and e-learning solutions in India and other markets. The MoU was signed between Andy Kalambi, President South Asia, Dassault Systemes and Sanjay Goel, CEO, PL Engineering in the presence of Bernard Charles.
The other is a strategic partnership with Persistent Systems, a global company specializing in software product development services, to offer integrated Dassault Systemes solutions based services to customers in key sectors such as energy, EPC, pharma & healthcare and other areas. The agreement was signed by Dr Anand Deshpande, Chairman, CEO & MD, Persistent Systems Ltd and Andy Kalambi of Dassault.
Benefits of the partnership
Commenting on the partnership, Andy Kalambi said that the partnership with Persistent will facilitate Dassault in targeting new and emerging sectors, apart from their traditional sectors such as automotive and aerospace. Dr Deshpande said, “We look forward to leverage our strengths in our core technology areas such as PLM, Cloud, Mobility, BI/Analytics and collaboration to service Dassault Systemes’ customers in India and then globally.”
Revolutionary 3D life like systems
Later, addressing a joint press conference, Andy Kalambi, Sanjay Goel, Bernard Charles and Dr Deshpande elaborated on the merits of the 3D solutions of Dassault Systemes. These applications provide a 3D vision of the entire life cycle of products from conception to maintenance to recycling. At the very concept stage itself when it provides a virtual life like simulation of the product, it has the potential to create virtual 3D lifelike experiences also of the product or the consequences/impact the product could have. This is true not only for products but also for projects, for design and engineering of refineries, petrochemicals and other chemical plants, oil & gas infrastructure and so on. This is where PL Engineering comes in with the full spectrum of design and engineering services they offer in oil & gas, chemical & petrochemical, power and infrastructure industries.
Replying to a question from Chemical Industry Digest, Sanjay Goel of PL Engineering said that while EPC companies already work on 3D softwares which provide walkthrough models, Dassault’s suite of solutions provide an entire architecture or platform to integrate the various softwares so that different cross functional teams can work seamlessly and from multi locations or even remote track and monitor project construction.
To another question, whether these solutions would find favour with SMEs, Bernard Charles said that the company’s applications and services enable businesses of all sizes in all industries to digitally define and simulate products, as well as the processes and resources required to manufacture, maintain and recycle these products. Describing the 3D virtual lifelike capabilities, Bernard said that this was nothing short of revolutionary, very user friendly and could even train the uninitiated to do things. Like for instance, he described through a video presentation how any ordinary person could engage in resuscitation efforts for a heart attack victim by using the directions and imagery created through 3D softwares.
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“This is truly welcome development not only from the point of view of spreading the word about Finnish innovation system but being present in India with specific focus on innovation during a decade that has been declared the decade of innovation’, said Ms Terhi Hakala, Ambassador of Finland, during her welcome address at the inauguration ceremony of FinNode- the Finnish Innovation network in India.
FinNode is an organization committed to facilitating networking between the Finnish companies and their foreign counterparts. With the inauguration of FinNode, India has become the fifth member of Finnish FinNode Innovation Network after USA, China, Russia and Japan. In his inaugural address, Riku Makela, Director, FinNode India deliberated upon the activities of FinNode. “FinNode actively reveals new openings for Finnish business and research organizations and supports their internationalization. FinNode is an entity through which foreign partners can engage with all the central public innovation organizations in Finland”, he said.
The event was also attended by Jyri Hakamies, Minister of economic Affairs, Finland. The Minister highlighted the significant role of FinNode in promoting Finnish companies that have proved their competencies by continuously innovating in the harsh climatic environment of Finland. From the Indian side, Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and IT, Minister of HRD attended the event. Sibal outlined the tremendous scope for Finnish companies to set up their base in India. “Here the challenges are different, especially in the education sector where we have different languages and transferring knowledge in these languages is a task. Also, the healthcare requirement and challenges are different in India than in Finland. For example, the healthcare requirement for elderly people in India is totally different form the requirements of elderly people in Finland where the climate is comparatively quite harsh. Also, India has a strong domestic demand for all the fields of innovation” Sibal said.
FinNode India’s current focus areas are cleantech (that includes areas like environment technology, energy and waste management), healthcare and well-being, education and learning, and base of the pyramid innovations. FinNode India initiates joint projects in these focus areas to foster collaboration between India and Finland, to evaluate opportunities, and to identify new business models. FinNode primarily supports companies from SME sector that have the required expertise but lack adequate networking support. The event was attended by executives from about 35 companies operating in these areas. The event also witnessed couple of joint venture agreements between companies from India and Finland.
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The Chemical Industries Association, Chennai recently concluded a seminar on “Technological solution for environmental issues” in Chennai. Industry leaders from in and around Chennai discussed various technologies that are environment-friendly and could go a long way in improving the pollution causing image of the chemical industry.
One of the technologies discussed included phycoremediation technology for treating industrial effluents, which uses micro and macro algae for removal of pollutants from waste water and CO2 from waste air. Presentations were also made on carbon capture methodologies, biomethanation solution, zero liquid discharge solution, zero air discharge technology and algae as a potential source for biofuel and for carbon capture.
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