Ali Raif İlaç Sanayi Breaks Ground on New Production Facility

Ali Raif İlaç Sanayi, a 100% domestically-owned pharmaceutical company operating in the Turkish drug sector for 58 years, laid the foundation for a new production facility in Istanbul's İkitelli district. The foundation-laying ceremony, held on 14 June, was attended by the company's board of management, a limited number of employees and business partners due to pandemic conditions.

30% Employment Growth Target

The new facility is scheduled for completion by the end of 2023, with Ali Raif İlaç aiming to increase current production capacity fourfold, raise employment by 30% and expand exports. Ali Raif İlaç CEO Muzaffer Bal said, "In December 1993, we came to an empty plot of land. Our hearts were beating with a different excitement that day; we opened our first factory in 1999 with the same enthusiasm. Since then, we have been producing our products here in compliance with all GMP conditions. We acquired the land for our second factory on 31 December 2019 and began our work with Sayar Grup in February 2020. We identified our needs and focused on preparing projects that would shed light on our future, resulting in a very good project—a magnificent undertaking covering an area of 24,000 square meters, at least twice the size of our current facilities. With this initiative, we aim to increase our production capacity fourfold. We estimate our investment cost for the new facility, which we plan to open at the end of 2023, to be around EUR 100 million. From now on, instead of referring to our İkitelli Facility or İkitelli Factory, we will be speaking of our İkitelli Complex, as we will have two factories here. Once we complete this factory, we will move our R&D Centre here, and we will upgrade our current facility to the most modern standards and begin rapidly working on new indications, new formulations and new drugs.

With the completion of our new factory, we will also increase our workforce by 30%. Another feature of this facility that we take pride in is that in light of our 'Respect for People' value and 'Adding Value to Life' mission, we will organize all our production processes here under a zero-waste planning approach," he said.

Nihal Arslan, the company's General Manager, also spoke: "We are very excited, pleased and proud. Our first objective from now on is to complete this factory we have just laid the foundation for in a very short time, put it into production, expand our production lines, increase our capacity and grow our product portfolio. Along with our new factory, in addition to our current production lines, we will also have liquid, ointment, coated tablet, pellet tablet and powder filling production lines. We have set out to make this factory a world-standard facility. Our dream and goal is to strengthen our position in the Turkish pharmaceutical market, become a successful player in the international market and open up to the global marketplace. I would also like to note that once our factory becomes fully operational, we will be open to collaborations such as contract manufacturing. Although we were unable to achieve broad participation in this foundation-laying ceremony for such a major investment due to Covid-19 precautions, this pride and success belong to all our employees. We wish it well for our country," he said.   Source: DHA