The first company we visited on our trip to Cyprus was the pharmaceutical company Medochemie. They are an International General Pharmaceutical Manufacturer and are primarily based in Cyprus. They have warehouses, offices, and factories in different countries around the world, including but not limited to, Cyprus, The Netherlands, and Vietnam.
Being an International General Pharmaceutical Manufacturer means that they develop general versions of many different drugs. Their Research and Development is focused on replicating and optimizing the works of other companies for commercial use. They also deal with a lot of glassware and containers. They sterilize and package different variations of glass and PVC (among other things) for many different pharmaceutical companies around the world.
Medochemie prides themselves on the affordability and the quality of their products. To ensure that the goods they produce are high quality they follow the “GMP”, a set of Good Manufacturing Standards set by the EU. They ensure the companies they get materials from hold themselves to similar if not higher standards than Medochemie. They also monitor the environment of their processing and manufacturing plants 24/7 to ensure no medication is ruined. Testing at all points of a product’s shelf life ensure that the drugs they are selling will work as intended for as long as the product is marketed for. These are just some of the things that Medochemie does to keep the quality of their goods high and to prevent scenarios like the Lubeck disaster from ever happening again.
To my surprise, the language barrier and difference in time zones were not as big of an issue for the company. Breaching into a new region of the world does present a cultural challenge, but past that it becomes extremely easy to communicate with the different plants. Even the packaging being changed for local vendors is all figured out.
One thing that the visit to Medochemie helped me realize was exactly how important the Ukraine situation was. I expected the price of their materials to go up, but having a headquarters in Ukraine is putting a lot of stress on every other office within Medochemie in an effort to pick up the slack. Also, because of the rising price of gasoline the price to move every single thing within their supply chain has shot up. I hadn’t internalized how large of a problem this was before the visit.
The business model of Wargaming is very different from that of Medochemie, but there were still valuable takeaways. Because of the nature of their product, they have to be very thorough in the questions they ask before they work too hard on a project and waste resources. Some of the things they contemplate include: Is there a market?, Is it on-brand for them?, Can they feasibly make it?, and Is it within their budget? Hearing how Wargaming thinks about and responds to those questions in their own way was very interesting and made me appreciate game developers more.