SET-listed pharmaceutical and food supplement company Inter Pharma Plc expects to achieve its sales target of 2.5 billion baht in 2024, one year early thanks to the pandemic, which has accelerated demand for pharmaceutical and food supplements.
Chief executive Trinnawat Thanitnitiphan said that the Covid-19 pandemic and the PM 2.5 dust problem have raised people's health concerns, thereby increasing usage of pharmaceutical, wellness and anti-ageing products during 2020-2021.
"More people dare to spend their money on healthcare products. The demand for several pharmaceutical products such as paracetamol has drastically increased in line with the number of people infected with Covid-19," said Mr Trinnawat, adding that many players have entered the healthcare business sector this year, leading the vitamin and dietary supplement industry to grow by 8% in 2020 to 66.8 billion baht.
"We've seen an increasing growth momentum for food supplements, wellness and pharmaceutical products in the first half of this year. Our sales have received a positive impact from the Covid-19 pandemic, growing by 20% from the same period of last year."
Apart from Covid-19, Mr Trinnawat said Thailand's ageing society will also spur demand for wellness products. It is expected that the country's elderly population will rise to 13.5 million people, or 20% of the population in 2023, up from 11.2 million people in 2018.
Inter Pharma reported total sales worth 379.15 million baht in the first half of this year, an increase of 89% over the same period of 2020, with net profit growing by 37.15% to 45.73 million baht.
The company expects its sales this year to grow by almost 100% to 850-900 million baht, outpacing earlier expectations of 750 million baht.
Higher sales also stem from the pharmaceutical products business after the company acquired Tewa (Thailand) Co, a pharmaceutical company, for 160 million baht in the first half of this year. Tewa's factory is located on 20 rai of land in Ayutthaya province.
The company has vowed to strengthen its business and extend its production to cover upstream, midstream and downstream this year.
The firm currently produces and markets five core product categories comprising pharmaceutical products; wellness and anti-ageing products; cosmeceuticals & aesthetic innovation products; companion animal healthcare products; and livestock animal healthcare products.
"We are already in upstream and midstream. We are now gearing towards downstream business by acquiring a new company that has a strong distribution network for the online channels, e-commerce and offline channels such as drug stores or partnerships with a call centre company in order to fulfil our distribution channel this year,'' Mr Trinnawat said.
Inter Pharma has two pharmaceutical and food supplement manufacturing facilities in Samut Prakan and Ayutthaya provinces.
