Largest pharmaceutical market in Latin America

Brazil is the biggest country in Latin America, with a population of more than 200 million. It’s also the region’s most important pharmaceuticals market, with total sales of some CHF 27 billion in 2018. The demand for medicines is correspondingly high. Generic products account for only 32% of the pharmaceuticals industry’s total medicine sales in Brazil. But they make up more than 70% of the market in volume terms. And the business is growing, too, at an annual rate of around 12%.

It’s local companies that hold the greatest share of Brazil’s generic medicines market. Laboratório Teuto Brasileiro S/A is one of the biggest, with annual turnover of some CHF 300 million. Around 300 medicines are manufactured in over 1 700 different packagings at the company’s Anápolis head-office site. Some 40% of these are injection products destined for hospitals, while the remaining 60% are generic products whose active substances are largely imported from China and India. Teuto employs some 500 personnel for its packaging operations alone, working on 40 packaging lines in clean-room conditions.

Perlen Packaging is specialised in high-barrier films

To protect their active ingredients from the high local humidity, these products need packagings with high-barrier credentials. Which is, of course, a Perlen Packaging speciality. “We chose Perlen Packaging as our supplier because of the high quality of their films,” confirms Albano Patrocinio, Teuto’s Purchasing & Business Development Director. “The geographical proximity of our two factories is a big logistical advantage, too,” he continues. “And we also put a strong emphasis at Teuto on maintaining long-term collaborations with our chosen partners.”