Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis has sold its leading local anti-nausea brand Reliverán to Argentine firm Gador.
Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis has sold its leading local anti-nausea brand Reliverán to Argentine firm Gador.
The transaction was closed in Buenos Aires on Friday April 24 and was confirmed to Pharmabiz by Víctor Rodríguez, Novartis’s Argentine public affairs and pharmacopolitics manager.
The companies declined to comment on the value of the transaction, but sources familiar with the market told Pharmabiz the amount would be about $14.4 million.
Reliverán is a mature product based on metoclopramide, and faces competition only from local generics. It is classified as a primary care product, an area that multinationals are leaving.
Primary care products are cheap, Reliverán selling at $1.79 for ten tablets or $5.62 for the sublingual version. Cassará meanwhile sells its drops at $1.11, and Biotenk offers tablets at $1.57 for 20.
The Reliverán brand was created by the Argentine Saúl Breitman’s company Finadiet and sold to Ciba Geigy in the sixties.
Reliverán’s competitors are Cassará‘s Gastrocalm, Biotenk‘s Midatenk, Microsules‘s Rilaquin and Klonal‘s Novomit among others.
Reliverán has five versions on the market: two in tablet form, three in drops and two in an injectable form that had been discontinued. In the last 12 months, the brand had sales totaling $5.7 million.
The product is manufactured in GSK’s local Phoenix plant, which belonged to Novartis itself until it was sold to Phoenix – then under the control of the Sielecki family. See article.
The plan for the future is that Gador will manufacture Reliverán at its own installations, but local regulatory body ANMAT must still approve the transfer and necessary permits.
Until then, «Novartis will continue to commercialize the product,» Rodríguez told Pharmabiz.
u$s1 = $8,89
