In light of the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination drive in the country, Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices (HMD), a medical syringe major, has recently announced investing a total of INR 100 crores in scaling up the production of syringes from current 2.5 billion to 3 billion capacity in the upcoming years.
It has been reported that the company has acknowledged an order for the delivery of about 265 million auto-disable (AD) syringes from the Union government. In fact, the company had already allocated two-thirds of its production capacity for government orders, and the balance for global UN consumers.
As per credible reports, HMD currently ships 0.1 ml and 0.5 ml AD Kojak syringes for worldwide vaccination programs for various acute to chronic diseases including measles, Hepatitis B, yellow fever, and others. In addition to this, the company is also covering the COVID-19 vaccination demand of 0.5 ml auto-disable Kojak for SII/AstraZeneca vaccine or Bharat Biotech vaccines and 0.3 ml for Pfizer’s vaccines.
Commenting on the latest move, Managing Director of HMD, Rajiv Nath, stated that the company not only observes the need to invest in production lines of syringes-molds, printing and assembly packaging, molding machines, and others, but also invest in needle assembly, recruiting workers, training them, and needles point grinding, accordingly.
While speaking on the investment, Mr. Nath added that the company potentially shares Narendra Modi’s vision and quest for an ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ and is thus looking forward to investing over Rs. 100 crores in ramping up HMD’s capacity from 2.5 billion syringes to 3 billion by the end of next-quarter.
In line with the ongoing development, it was reported that the company has already received orders for 240 million Kojak syringes for COVAX from UNICEF and about 79 million for Brazil for Dispovan syringes via PAHO.
Earlier this year, HMD had announced supplying over 440 million Kojak syringes to India’s massive vaccination spree by September, including 177 million of these by April, alongside the supplies of Dispovan syringes to the vaccination clinics and private healthcare settings.