The Mumbai-based Piramal Healthcare plans to set up a manufacturing unit to process raw opium for pharmaceutical use. It helps domestic pharma companies in locally procuring opium-based products like morphine, codeine and thebaine. Indian opium contains a range of chemical compounds such as morphine, codeine, thebaine, noscapine and papaverine, which have widespread medical and scientific uses. In making cough syrups, Codeine is one of the most sought opium products by the Indian pharmaceutical industry.
The plant will be set up at the company's existing facility at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh.
The estimated cost of setting up the plant is between US$ 14 - 20 million.
This opium processing unit would reduce the dependency on imported codeine. Piramal Healthcare has also entered a technological tie-up with a US-based firm to produce opium-based drugs.
