Korean vaccine manufacturers led by GC and SK Chemical are winning more deals to ship their products abroad this year.
GC successfully developed a flu vaccine as the first local company in 2009. In March, the pharmaceutical firm won a $37 million (41 billion won) order of its flu vaccine from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional office of the World Health Organization (WHO), for the southern hemisphere for 2018.
The volume is a 15 percent increase from GC’s export of flu vaccine for the hemisphere in 2017.
Although SK Chemical is a late runner in vaccine manufacturing, it released the world’s second shingles vaccine Skyzoster last year. Recently, the company launched Skycellflu, the first cell culture quadrivalent vaccine covering four strains of influenza viruses in the world.
SK Chemical obtained approval for overseas sales of Sky Varicella Inj., a chickenpox vaccine, in June. The company is to receive the WHO’s pre-qualification (PQ) inspection on its plant that manufactures cell culture trivalent flu vaccines.
LG Chem is chasing GC and SK Chemical by continuing LG Life Sciences’ research and development for vaccines.
The company received the WHO’s certification as the third Korean vaccine maker and recently won an international bidding.
LG Life Sciences had its production of Upenta Inj. recognized by the WHO’s PQ recently. The company also won international and individual country biddings to export 10 billion won worth vaccines.
“As of 2015, domestic vaccine makers exported 50 percent of their products. In December last year, the WHO decided to exempt GMP(Good Manufacturing Practice) inspection for Korean vaccines that passed PQ in quality, safety, and efficacy, because it regarded Korea’s vaccine production capacity and safety system reliable,” SK Securities said in a recent report.
“This means that local drugmakers can advance the timing of exporting self-produced vaccines more than half a year, which will have a positive impact on the long-term growth of the domestic vaccine industry,” the report added.
According to the report, the size of the global vaccine market is expected to reach $60 billion by 2020.
The estimation assumed that the annual average growth rate would be around 15 percent, which is much steeper than the current drug market growth rate of 5 percent.
GSK, Merck, Pfizer, and Sanofi have grabbed 89 percent of the global vaccine market in 2016.
The local vaccine market has grown to 556.3 billion won in 2016 from 408.7 billion won in 2012, at an annual growth rate of 8 percent on average.