MSAR, first step into the world

Jorge Pastilha: In the pharmaceutical business, ‘the supply chain quality is critical’

The Hovione group was founded in Portugal in 1959 by Ivan Villax, a Hungarian chemical engineer whose family had moved to Lisbon to get away from the Second World War. But it took 20 years for the company’s path to eventually reach Macau. In 1979 Villax visited Guangdong province and, “very impressed with what he saw,” decided to open an office in Hong Kong, Jorge Pastilha said.
At that point Hovione had one single factory, in Portugal, but existing regulations were making the production of one particular active ingredient too expensive – the broad-spectrum antibiotic doxycycline. “It became clear we had to produce it somewhere else,” the Hovione Macau general manager explained.
Villax visited Australia and Singapore before coming to the then Portuguese-administered territory. “In a very short period of time all the necessary conditions were created. The fact that in Macau the law was Portuguese and people spoke Portuguese also helped,” Pastilha stressed.
The factory construction began in 1984, signalling the company’s “first step toward internationalisation”.
“It was a huge investment, an enormous risk for a very small business,” the Portuguese manager said. Furthermore, he added, “nowadays no land would ever be available in Macau to build such a factory”.
The production began in 1986, focusing on doxycycline, which “still today remains our most important active ingredient,” Pastilha said. Just a year later, in 1987, the American Food and Drug Administration inspected the factory and gave the green light for the exports to the US. To date, the US continues to be  Macau’s essential market.