China - October 28, 2024

Danish pharma's success exemplifies China's growing global appeal

(Voice_over)

For the past three decades, Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk has been steadily expanding its footprint in Tianjin in northern China.

Since first breaking ground in 1994, the company's presence in China has evolved from basic packaging facilities to a fully integrated industrial chain.

Novo Nordisk's vice president says because a majority of their raw materials are sourced locally, they can make more products, faster.

Here, automated assembly lines produce around 200 insulin pens every minute.

(Sound_bite)

Lars Arnoldsen, Vice President, Novo Nordisk Global Enterprises; President, Tianjin Production Plant:

"All the way down here is an assembly line for our platform that we called a pre-filled device. So, all the different components go in these different parts of the line. You can see the components are coming quite fast up here to the line and that also tells something about the speed of we are producing here. In general, with all materials that we are using, it's around 70 percent that we are sourcing locally."

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The company's most recent investments into the city include a 170 million U.S dollar expansion project at its finished product workshop, plus a 70-million-dollar investment into a 7,000-square-meter warehouse.

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Lars Arnoldsen, Vice President, Novo Nordisk Global Enterprises; President, Tianjin Production Plant:

"I'm extremely happy to see the reforms that are taking place at the moment within the regulatory field. We have just been investing heavily here in Tianjin, so we are already preparing us very much for the future. We have had a very healthy development throughout many years. We have had so great support from authorities in this area."

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As of July, the company had introduced 22 innovative drugs and 11 advanced injection devices into the Chinese market, providing patients with new treatment options.

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