South Africa’s Adcock Ingram says Datlabs is slowing down its business

South African pharmaceutical firm Adcock Ingram says its businesses in Zimbabwe and rest of Africa are weighing down its performance after incurring losses of $968 000 (R13.2 million) in the financial year ended June 30, 2015.

Adcock Ingram has interests in Datlabs, a leading Zimbabwean pharmaceutical and personal care company producing many well recognised leading brands such as Cafemol, Panado, Solphyllex and Lanolene Milk under licence.

“While the group’s presence in Zimbabwe, Kenya and Ghana individually and collectively constitutes a small percentage of the group’s assets, business in each of these destinations remains a challenge and preoccupation of management, far greater in time than their relative size should dictate,” the company said in a statement.

“During the year under review, although the results suggest a positive turn of direction, these businesses still incurred losses of R13.2 million (2014:R29 million),” it said.

Datlabs wants to set up a factory to manufacture ointments, syrups and tablets at a cost of $5 million and requires a further $2.5 million for operations, including settling debts.

The company is one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers in the country and shut down its intravenous fluids manufacturing factory in 2006 partly due to government’s failure to pay a $200 000 debts, which remains outstanding to this day.

Zimbabwe used to be a very strong pharmaceutical centre but the sector failed to recover from the hyper-inflation era that lasted until 2009 when the country adopted multicurrency basket anchored on the United States dollar to replace the worthless local unit, according industry officials. A poor business environment that has persisted in recent years has worsened the industry’s position, they said.-The Source

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