By KYIV. Nov 4 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian pharmaceutical manufacturers may reduce production of medicines due to war-induced power outages, they are asking the Ministry of Energy to regulate the power outage of pharmaceutical plants, to make it more planned, representatives of leading Ukrainian pharmaceutical companies told Interfax-Ukraine.
In particular, the press service of the Farmak pharmaceutical company noted that despite the fact that the company is an object of critical infrastructure, its enterprises both in Kyiv and Shostka are also cut off daily.
"This leads to very serious consequences, because Farmak operates according to international standards, so it is extremely important for us to have a guarantee of continuity of production processes. Any shutdowns lead to a discrepancy in the production process of medicines and the loss of entire product series," the company said, noting that Farmak’s products are needed both by the population and at the front.
The company emphasizes that the biggest problem with power outages is that they occur suddenly.
“Outages occur suddenly, without notification, because the power grids themselves do not know when there will be an instruction to turn off one or another sector of the energy system. We appealed to the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine and hope to find ways to solve the problem," the company said.
Farmak clarified that powerful generators were installed at the company’s enterprises, but without electricity, the plant can only work for three days.
"After this period, we will take care not so much of production as of supporting the enterprise in a hot standby, so that when the power supply is restored, all production processes can be quickly restored," the company said.
At the same time, Farmak notes that the company is responsible for saving and takes measures to reduce energy consumption, uses generators. At the same time, energy consumption indicators, despite the opening in 2022 of a new production site, the construction of which began in 2021, and an increase in production volumes in autumn 2022, decreased by an average of 10.2% compared to the same period in 2021.
In turn, the operations director of Darnitsa pharmaceutical company, Yevhen Cherkass, noted that some production processes at the enterprise were transferred to the night shift and weekends, although power outages at the plant were "like everywhere."
"Darnitsa has been implementing energy efficiency projects for a long time. For example, we use only LED lighting. In the current conditions, in order to reduce electricity consumption, we turned off the outdoor lighting of the territory and the office/factory, tightened control over the operation of the equipment and are introducing the Economical Office concept," Cherkass said.
He stressed that "if the situation with energy supply continues to deteriorate, we will be forced to reduce production volumes."
"We really hope that the energy sector of Ukraine will cope with the challenges that we have now," he stressed.
