Today was our first site visit and we visited Andromanco, a local pharmaceutical company. Andromanco mostly produces creams and ointments and actually controls around 30% of the market in Argentina for creams and ointments. However, a challenge they face is still the everyday competition. Although their number one product sold is Hipoglas, a cream that the worker said, “everyone has one of these in their homes.” He also said that there are knock off types of this same cream that other companies try to sell, but Hipoglas is still the number one go to brand. Of all the products Andromanco produces, 30% of it is samples. This is a business strategy used to draw people in to buy their products. However, this leaves this company with only 10% profit of everything it produces. A final challenge that Andromanco faces, as well as any other company in the pharmaceutical industry or even just in general, is the need to stay up to date and innovative, a common theme I’ve observed over these past four days throughout Buenos Aires. Specifically, Andromanco is trying to shorten the transition time between making products. Our guide told us a specific example where the time was cut from five hours to two and a half currently and are striving for one and a half in the next couple months with the end goal of under one hour.
Regarding the pharmaceutical industry in Argentina in general, some challenges they may face is exporting products. Exporting pharmaceuticals from Argentina is not common because the standards held in Argentina are not as high as other international standards like the FDA for example. This leads to imports being higher than exports, which in turn hurts the economic standings of the pharmaceutical industry. Also, the companies that provide pharmaceuticals to the public hospitals only produce for the public hospitals, and at a cheaper price and quality. Therefore, the other pharmaceutical companies in Argentina are all private and fighting with each other for more market control.
After Andromanco, we ate a delicious lunch and explored the area of San Telmo, which had cobblestone roads and lots of shops along the way. After we went to the ESMA Museum. This museum is a remembrance to the part of the Dirty War where family members were taken with parents killed and the babies given to war families to be raised as if the child is their own. It was sad to see the names and faces of those killed, taken, and still missing. However, it was nice to see that some children had eventually found out who they were and met their biological grandparents later on in life. Today was fun to be on a site visit as well as explore the Argentine culture. Until tomorrow!
