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June 10, 2007: The chinese
pharmaceutical industry has cornered a major share
of the world market in the production of
antibiotics, analgesics, enzymes, and primary
amino acids besides the bulk of vitamins A, B12, C
and E flooring most of the competitors in these
segments in recent years, according to reports.
Currently, China makes 70 percent of the
world's penicillin, 50 percent of its aspirin and
35 percent of its acetaminophen (paracetamol.)
In the wake of a pet food scandal, in which
adulterated wheat gluten from China led to the
deaths of thousands of pets in North America, and
other instances of food and toothpaste tampering,
China's vitamin producers are reaching out to
reassure US consumers that their vitamins are
safe.
China's entry into vitamin C involved ingenuity
- and an unwitting assistance from the US
Department of Justice. In the late 1970s and early
1980s, several big Chinese drug companies, working
with the government-backed Chinese Academy of
Sciences, devised a method to cut the normal
five-step process for making vitamin C to a
two-step fermentation process, leaving European,
US, and Japanese firms a step behind.
The new method cut costs and gave China a
manufacturing edge. It wasn't until 1997, when US
attorneys broke up what they said was a
price-fixing cartel of European and Japanese
producers, that the door swung wide open for the
Chinese producers.
Firms such as Weisheng, which had planned to
produce 3,000 tons of vitamin C a year, stepped up
its capacity to 30,000 tons a year by mid-2004,
which it claims is the largest in the world.
Another company across the city, Hebei Welcome
Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., has a capacity of 20,000
tons a year. Together, the two companies make
nearly half of the annual world production.
"The Chinese did a good job in this. They used
their existing know-how and leveraged it in a
clever way," said Alexander Filz, a spokesman for
DSM, a Dutch chemical, nutritional and
pharmaceutical company, which is the sole
competition in Europe for vitamin C production.
Critics say the Chinese companies practiced
predatory pricing, undercutting the remaining
producers, with an eye to cornering the world
market and making an eventual killing.
Today, only one Western company still makes
vitamin C - Dutch-based DSM - and as China
monopolizes vitamin C production, prices have hit
$6 a kilogram (2.2 pounds).
BY OUR PHARMA CORRESPONDENT
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