Published on December 1, 2014

In the US, consolidation of pharmaceutical supply chains through which wholesale and retail drug suppliers have teamed up to procure generic medicines, has started to hurt the revenues of Indian generics players whose sales mainly come from the US market. As per the industry experts, most of the anticipated consolidation in the US drug supply chain had happened, moreover at the same time as the firm had been able to counter the impact, to some extent through a rise in market share, it had not been able to do so completely.

According to the sources, in North America sales the Hyderabad based major pharmaceutical company Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd had reported 8% year-on-year growth to Rs. 1,430 crore in the July-September period, however in the corresponding period of FY14 this was noted much lower than the 42% growth. On the other hand another major pharmaceutical company Sun Pharmaceuticals and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals had also confirmed that US generic sales had been hurt.

Furthermore as per the sources, US court has rejected the request of Ranbaxy to stop the launch of generics of Nexium, heartburn pill, Valcyte and anti-viral. The company on 11th November, 2014 had filed a lawsuitin the District of Columbia in the US against the decision of US Food & Drug Administration (US FDA) in order to rescind approvals for the generic versions of Valcyte (marketed by Roche) and Nexium (marketed by Astrazenca).