Having overcome the challenges of acquiring Medley and investing in the local production of its slimming pens, the Brazilian pharmaceutical company EMS is now focusing its attention on increasing its tablet production capacity.
The company, controlled by the Sanchez family, will begin a new investment cycle of R$ 1 billion to build a new factory in Manaus, Amazonas, adjacent to the unit the company already owns.
The plan begins in early 2027 and lasts until the end of 2028. The goal is for the company's production capacity to increase from 1.5 billion tablets per month to 2 billion. This will mean an annual increase of six billion tablets, going from 18 billion to 24 billion units per year.
“EMS has invested heavily in injectables, eye drops, and other areas, and now needs to make progress in tablets,” says Marcus Sanchez, vice president of EMS, in an interview with NeoFeed .
The increase will help the pharmaceutical company grow from a projected revenue of R$12 billion in 2026 to R$15.5 billion in two years. According to the businessman, the plan is for the majority of the resources for the expansion to come from equity capital, with a small portion financed through the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES).
In total, tablets represent 70% of the company's revenue. This means that, after the expansion, the plan is for EMS to generate more than R$ 10 billion in revenue from this type of product alone in 2028.
Liquid medications, such as solutions and syrups, account for 15% of the company's revenue. The remaining 15% comes from other pharmaceutical areas, such as ointments and injectables, like slimming pens.
In the ranking of oral medications, the company's main areas of operation include tablets for cardiology, orthopedics, gastrointestinal, and neuropsychiatry, among others.
Most of the new investment package will go towards the construction of the Amazonian unit, but a smaller portion will also be allocated to expansions in Anápolis, Goiás, and Hortolândia, São Paulo, which is the company's largest manufacturing plant. The intention at these two units is to increase part of the production capacity for injectable medications.
According to Sanchez, the size of the check for expansions may increase, depending on the approval timeframe by the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade) for the acquisition of Medley.
In March, the French company Sanofi announced that EMS had won the bidding war against other players and confirmed the sale of its generics unit in Brazil for US$600 million. Until the final decision, however, the European pharmaceutical company remains in charge of the operation. Approval is expected by the end of the year.
The expansion at the factory in the Northern Region is also strategic. Besides already being the location where almost 100% of the tablets are produced, the decision to expand is also linked to tax incentives, due to the unit's location within the Manaus Free Trade Zone. In practice, this guarantees greater competitiveness and productivity.
With low stock shortages of its medications on pharmacy counters, EMS intends, with this new investment, to guarantee an extra supply of medicine boxes on the shelves of the main retailers in the sector.
“The company has noticed an increase in demand for tablets from all areas. And today we haven't detected any shortages. Our view is that it makes much more sense to be fully prepared to meet market demand than to potentially have to put out fires,” says Sanchez.
In addition to slimming pens
The decision for the new investment also marks the end of the previous three-year cycle, which involved R$ 2 billion for expansions of production lines, including the factory for products analogous to LPG-1, such as slimming pens, in the factory in the interior of São Paulo. The final phase of machinery installations will be completed in the first half of this year.
Last August, EMS launched Olire (for obesity treatment) and Lirux (for diabetes) pens on the national market. These are GLP-1 analogues that use liraglutide as their active ingredient. Currently, the Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) has not authorized any pharmaceutical company to manufacture and market similar liraglutide products.
It is projected that revenue from these two products alone will reach R$ 120 million in August, in the first 12 months after launch, exceeding the initial forecast of R$ 100 million.
As NeoFeed had previously revealed exclusively, the company is preparing to launch its liraglutide in the United States in the second half of the year, with a forecast of selling one million units in the first 12 months.
EMS is now awaiting approval from the regulatory agency to begin production and marketing of its own version of Ozempic, a semaglutide-based pen from the Danish company Novo Nordisk, whose patent expired at the end of March. It is expected to be released by the end of May.
In this regard, the company has already prepared an investment of at least R$ 100 million to adjust the production capacity of the pens. To enter the slimming pen market, EMS had already invested R$ 1.2 billion.
According to Sanchez, the investment in semaglutide does not affect the plan for the tablet unit. "They are different factories and a different type of technology," says the vice president, nephew of Carlos Sanchez, chairman of the board of EMS.
Today the company has approximately 11,800 employees across all its units, including the factory in Serbia, the development center in Italy, and employees in the United States. The forecast is to exceed 13,000 by 2028, based on new investments.
In Brazil, in addition to Hortolândia and Manaus, EMS also has factories in Jaguariúna, São Paulo; Anápolis, Goiás; São Jerônimo, Rio Grande do Sul; and Brasília.
