Morison (formerly known as J.L. Morison Son & Jones (Ceylon) PLC) will in two years time begin to reverse the mega drain of foreign exchange to purchase pharmaceutical drugs, by exporting Made in Sri Lanka drugs to the world.
Managing Director, J.L. Morison Son & Jones, now re-branded as Morison, Dinesh Attapattu said that to export pharmaceutical product it’s a global requirement to use the drug in the country of manufacture for two years but it may depend on the country.
“We have now used five drugs made by us for a year and in two years they will be ready to be exported,” he said.
He said that these exports should be to European countries since India, Bangladesh and Pakistan are all self-sufficient in the pharma sector.
In 1959, J.L. Morison Son & Jones along with neighbouring countries ventured into pharmaceutical manufacturing and their first manufacturing facility was at Aluthmawatha Road, Mutwal and became one of the pioneers of generic pharmaceutical manufacturing in Sri Lanka.
However, Sri Lankan authorities did not support the local pharma industry introducing various negative policy changes in contrast to neighbouring countries where the local pharma sector was fully supported.
Successive governments supported pharma imports while the neighbouring countries discouraged them.
“Due to these negative sentiments even our shareholders who had mixed feelings had, however, reinvested Rs. 4 billion in a new factory in Homagama. Today, our progress and manufacturing capabilities are well reviewed by the shareholders and with exports on the cards we are happy that we could contribute towards saving forex to the country,” Attapattu said.
The new ultra modern facility now manufacturers and has put out five ‘Made in Sri Lanka’ tables and syrup to the local market and the introduction of them are slowly but surely received positive feedback by the local industry and this has led to a price drop of some of the imported completive products by nearly 50%.
He said that they will have some 10 more made in Lanka pharma products in Sri Lanka medical shelves by the end of the year.
He also said that the factory has received WHO GMP (World Health Organization – Good Manufacturing Practice) approval from NMRA and is compliant with EU GMP (European Union-Good Manufacturing Practice) quality management system.
Morison is collaborating with reputed international contract research organisations to expedite development of novel therapies.
