Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings Limited (GPHL) held a conference on July 19 to review its work in the first half of 2019 and plan tasks for the second half of the year at its Guangzhou headquarters.

According to the conference, GPHL made remarkable achievements in the fields of scientific and technological innovation, talent introduction, industry cooperation for poverty relief, internationalization development, and major projects in the first half year. GPHL’s major subsidiaries and departments introduced work plans for the second half of the year, and the group’s Chairman Li Chuyuan gave a summary speech.

GPHL is a wholly state-owned enterprise authorized by the Guangzhou municipal government to operate state-owned assets. GPHL is dedicated to the manufacture and sales of Chinese patent medicine with import and export trade as a sideline.

Scientific and technological innovation

GPHL’s National Center for Dog Testing and Experimentation made it onto the National Science & Technology Resource Sharing Service Platform list, being the only one of its kind in China and the only platform from Guangdong on the list.

Talent introduction

GPHL on March 12th appointed Randy Schekman, the 2013 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, as the chief scientist of both the group and its subsidiary Guangzhou General Pharmaceutical Research Institute Co., Ltd. He will head up the study and development of antineoplastic drugs.

GPHL now has a scientific research team consisting of three Nobel laureates, 20 Chinese academicians and TCM masters, and around 100 researchers with doctor’s or postdoctoral degrees.

Industry cooperation for poverty relief

The roxburgh rose product line manufactured by GPHL’s subsidiary Wanglaoji is the fruition of cooperation between GPHL and Guizhou province. Last November, GPHL began work on the roxburgh rose project in Bijie, a city in Guizhou, in attempt to help the city lift itself out of poverty. On February 21st this year, the first batch of Wanglaoji roxburgh rose lozenges were produced. The whole process only took 98 days, a record for GPHL in terms of providing support to such poverty-stricken areas.

Internationalization development

On April 4th, GPHL signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Dong-A Socio Group at the 8th China (Guangdong) - Korea Development Exchange Forum in Seoul. According to the agreement, both enterprises will cooperate in the fields of consumer goods, drugs and medical apparatus, and strengthen exchange regarding the development of the international market and training future talent.

GPHL subsidiary Wanglaoji held a launch ceremony for its herbal tea museum project in Tokyo, Japan on April 9th, 2019. This is Wanglaoji’s second overseas herbal tea museum; the first opening in Manhattan, New York last November.

On May 20th, GPHL and the Confucius Institute in Auckland (“CI in Auckland”) announced a TCM promotion partnership. GPHL and CI in Auckland co-founded the Shennong Caotang Traditional Chinese Medicine Culture Centre. In the future, the two parties will work together in training future TCM talent and sharing educational resources.

GPHL and the University of Auckland entered into an agreement to set up GPHL’s first overseas scholarship entitled the “New Zealand Wang Lao Ji Auspiciousness Cultural Ambassador Scholarship”, supporting students from the University of Auckland by offering an internship at GPHL.

Representatives of outstanding subsidiaries receive certificates.

Major projects

GPHL broke ground on the construction of its R&D and marketing headquarters located at Guangzhou’s International Biotech Island (GIBI) on the morning of March 1st, 2019. With investment totalling around 1 billion RMB, the project, covering an area of 31,000 square meters, includes an R&D center, an incubation and innovation base, a laboratory, and a detection center.

GPHL began the construction of the first phase of its medicine logistics project in Zhongluotan Town, Baiyun District, Guangzhou on March 12th, 2019. The logistics project in Baiyun is designed to be a highly automated, intelligentized, environment friendly medicine logistics center. It will be able to deliver medicine provincewide within four hours, handle 220,000 orders daily and 24 million boxes of drugs each year.

Authors: Monica Liu

Editor: Chris