With the start of operations of its megaplant in Santa Tecla, inaugurated in 2023, the laboratory quadrupled its production capacity.
Laboratorios Vijosa experienced a growth of 266 percent in its sales in the last decade, which allowed it to crown itself as the largest pharmaceutical exporter in El Salvador.
For 13 consecutive years, Vijosa is the laboratory with the most shipments to the foreign market according to the Ranking of Industrial Exporters, presented this Thursday by the Salvadoran Association of Industrialists (ASI).
“We were born with an export vocation,” said Monica Saca, corporate director of Laboratorios Vijosa, recalling that they currently send products made in Salvadoran plants to 17 countries, including Central America, the Caribbean, South America and the United States.
To bolster the export arm, the executive added, they invested more than $100 million in the construction of a mega-plant, inaugurated in November 2023 in the Santa Tecla industrial area and strengthened injectable production lines.
“We have quadrupled our production and it has also increased the human resource,” Saca said. In this plant, eight million units are produced every 24 hours, in the lines of beauty products, health and strengthening of the immune system.
Vijosa is the only laboratory in Central America that complies with the PIC/S, annex 1, and World Health Organization (WHO) Report 53, which allow it to export products to high-ve Surveillance pharmaceutical markets, such as Europe and the United States.
The Salvadoran laboratory was founded in 1971 with a plant specializing in injections in the colony La Rábida, in San Salvador, with a production line of seven products. Currently, it manufactures more than 700 medicines, including injections, oral solutions, gelcaps, tablets, syrups, soluble powders and surgical masks.
Its flagship product is Viro-Grip, both in the Salvadoran market and in export destinations. In its megaplant, the company says, it has the capacity to fill 180,000 envelopes in 24 hours.
Pharmaceutical production
Taking a reference to the Central Reserve Bank (BCR), the production of pharmaceuticals, medicinal chemicals and botanical products registered an accelerated increase from 2020 following the shock of the covid-19 pandemic.
In 2021 alone, $341.1 million was produced, 2.7 percent of manufacturing production. That year, exports exceeded $190.4 million, a figure that for 2022 fell to $169.3 million.
According to the BCR, exports at the end of 2023 exceeded $182.7 million, 7.9 percent growth compared to 2022.
The pharmaceutical industry exported 36 products to 45 countries, of which 88.8 per cent corresponds to human consumption and 11.2 per cent for veterinary use. The main destination for domestic production is Central America, where 81 per cent of exports were directed.
From the region, Guatemala experienced a 15 percent growth in exports, while from South America Argentina stood out with a strong rebound of 139 %. This performance is attributed to tariff benefits through trade treaties, according to information collected by the Association of Pharmaceutical Chemical Industrialists of El Salvador (Inquifar) in a sectoral report that it will present shortly.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo