Yesterday
In 1998, setting up a pharmaceutical business in China was pioneering.
One of the few forerunners dated back to the beginning of the 1980s, when several Chinese researchers embarked on the process of extracting hormones from urine in the area between Nanjing and Hangzhou, organizing collection centers. However, in the mid-1990s, the logistical conditions of the rural villages in those regions, which underwent major transformation with the rapid development of rural entrepreneurship, meant that collection of these hormones was no longer easy.
When the management of IBSA decided to open a factory in China, the province of Shandong offered optimal conditions for starting the collection of the raw materials. At that time IBSA was able to count on the highly-organized system of villages, with ease of access to homes and potential donors, thanks to registers that systematically recorded the names of pregnant or menopausal women. Once the region was identified, all that remained to be done was to choose the place to build the production site. The choice fell on Huashan, a district in the vicinity of the city of Qingdao and the airport, with a broad concentration of densely-populated villages.
The mayor of Huashan became a fundamental go-between and was happy to provide the support needed to launch the project: following the discussion, the possibility of building the factory of a Swiss company in Huashan became a reality, simultaneously “overcoming” the impasse for industrial development in the area, where there was already a large number of small, easily-accessible buildings that were, however, completely unused.
It took 18 months to complete the legal procedures required to establish the Company and to obtain the necessary authorizations. And that is how Qingdao Huashan Biochemical Co. Ltd. came into being, a company that today IBSA can be prouder than ever.
