HMD has assisted India in its Covid-19 vaccine program. The company has won several massive orders to supply syringes for the program.
One of the major manufactures of syringes in the world, Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices Ltd (HMD), has helped India fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Delhi-based family-owned company secured an order from the Government of India in March 2021 to deliver 265 million auto-disable (AD) syringes for the country’s COVID-19 vaccine program.
HMD sells the AD syringes under the brand name Kojak Selinge. The syringes come in a variety of sizes for both mass vaccination programmes and to be used in general.
The order received in March was the government’s fourth order (worth around Rs 55 crore) to HMD. Before March, the company had secured three orders for the 0.5 mL auto-disable syringes that totaled 177.5 million pieces. Supplies for the March order will be available until September 2021.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partner organisations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the International Federation of Red Cross consider the auto-disable syringe (AD syringe) to be a safe, easy-to-use, reliable, and affordable syringe for mass immunisation programmes. This eliminates the possibility of infection or sickness.
At the height of Covid-19, in June 2020, HMD was producing around 500 million units of 0.5 ml auto-disable syringes every year. In March, that figure had risen to almost 800 million pieces, with plans to increase capacity to 1.2 billion pieces by September 2021.
Rajiv Nath, MD of HMD, has made significant expenditures to expand the company’s capacity to manufacture syringes. Rajiv invested nearly $15 million (about Rs 100 crore) in May 2020 (approximately one-sixth of his annual sales) to mass produce these exact syringes even before purchase orders were in sight.
These investments included the acquisition of new moulds from Italy, Japan, and Germany for the production of various types of barrels and plungers.
HMD produces 3.75 lakh syringes each hour in its factories situated across 11 acres in Haryana’s Faridabad industrial region. The company now manufactures approximately 250 crore varied syringes each year, and planned to increase this further.
HMD said it will supply over 440 million syringes for India’s big vaccination push by September, up from 365 million in July this year, along with Dispovan supplies to private hospitals and vaccination clinics.
