May&Baker plans expansion, says ‘we can’t meet demand for Paracetamol’

May&Baker, a pharmaceutical company, says it will use some of the proceeds from its rights issue to build a plant that will be dedicated to the production of Paracetamol, an analgesic.

Addressing pressmen on Monday at the company’s office in Lagos,  Nnamdi Okafor, the company’s CEO, said the company is targeting a turnover of N50 billion by 2023.

The company recently floated a N2.45 billion rights issue.

According to Okafor, N500 million from the proceeds of the rights issue will be used for capacity expansion for Paracetamol.

“Over N400 million of the expected N2.45 billion will be used to finance part of our equity in Biovaccines Nigeria Limited, the joint venture company for local vaccine production,” he said.

“We are also going to invest over N500 million on capacity expansion for one of our cash cow products, paracetamol, for which we are building a dedicated plant.

“Marketing and brand building is expected to take over N500 million. About N400 million will be used to offset part of its current loan portfolio of about N950 million, while the remaining will be used to buy working capital.”

He said that the company had some significant agreement from its majority shareholders to embrace the offer.

“We are comfortable with the level of commitment we have from majority shareholders if not, we would not have gone to the market,” Okafor said.

He said the impact of the proceeds of the rights would begin to manifest in 2019, adding that new shares would benefit from the dividends from 2018 earnings.