SHANGHAI – China Resources Pharmaceutical Group (CRP) has broken ground on its ¥14 billion (US$2.3 billion) campus in Daxing Biomedical Park in Beijing. CRP said that it’s “a good fit with the Beijing pharmaceutical industry development plan. It will greatly promote the Beijing biopharmaceutical industry by leapfrogging, transforming and upgrading it to make biopharmaceuticals a pillar industry in Beijing.”

CRP is considered one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in China with eight pharmaceutical subsidiaries nationwide. Its parent company, the majority state-owned China Resources Holding Group, is one of the largest companies in China.

The campus, known as the China Resources Beijing Pharmaceutical Group Industrial Park, is an effort to consolidate CRP’s various pharmaceutical functions. It will contain approximately 8 million square feet of building space in a 640-acre area.

Daxing Biomedical Park is located in the Southwest corner of Beijing, and is considered bigger than Beijing’s other well-known life science park, in Zhongguancun, at the opposite corner of the city.

The plan is touted as one of the largest of its kind in China. The CRP campus will integrate all aspects of pharmaceutical development from innovative R&D facilities, cGMP manufacturing, quality control and storage.

CRP has recently acquired several smaller research and pharmaceutical companies and gone through an extensive corporate reorganization. The campus will serve to streamline functions at one site and assist in “unified management.”

“The [Daxing Biomedical] park attracts one of the biggest companies in China into their park; $2 billion dollars is a big investment,” said Jun Bao, senior vice president at Shenogen, a Beijing-based drug development firm. “There are already a lot of companies in the park. By locating in the park, they will be able to leverage government support to obtain more funding or tax relief.”

Innovative biopharma R&D is stated as a key part of the park’s objectives but this is not what CRP known for. Rather its brands such as Sanjiu (Triple-9) brand of herbal remedies that stand out to most consumers.

After the reorganization, they now have subsidiaries under their nutritional consumer products division, chemical pharmaceutical division and a large distribution network.

The campus makes mention of developing an incubator and R&D platform for other companies and will likely offer a fee-for-service arrangement. According to Jun, other companies have called themselves platforms for industry development to fulfill government objectives and obtain benefits such as government funding.

A long list of government officials were in attendance at the opening, reflecting the size and importance of the project. Senior officials included former vice chairman of the National People’s Congress, China’s key legislative body, and the deputy mayor of Beijing, Linke Qing.

Typical of a project of this scale – CRP has more than profits and innovation to consider, it has to achieve China’s highest expectation for modernization while at the same time contributing to social development.

Managing Director Qiao Shibao said during the opening that the goal is “to build a first-class, international leading innovative research and development and high-end manufacturing base for Beijing’s economic and social development and make greater contribution.”

But is it All Hype?

For industry insiders such as William Keller, consultant and Shanghai Zhangjiang Biotech Zone advisor, it is as yet unclear how the funds will be used or if the project is namely a real estate development.

There is an estimated 100-plus life science parks in China. For this project, he cautioned a wait-and-see approach.

If most of the funds are used to purchase land, the funds to develop innovative R&D may be considerably smaller. It would not be unheard of for almost half of the $2 billion to go toward land purchase, Bao noted.

The Beijing team of global architecture firm HDR, of Omaha, Neb., has been tapped to design the project. It has been involved in the design of the Daxing Park and responsible for the Beijing International Medical Center of “medical city,” as it is dubbed, which will be the largest medical center in the world.

HDR is expected to bring to the CRP project the latest standards in health care engineering to developing manufacturing facilities but will also adopt a green low carbon approach for the entire campus. However, HDR’s main challenge is to effectively bring together so many separate companies and functions.

“This is an opportunity for China Resources to unify all of its disparate parts and rebrand itself as one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the world,” said Brian Kowalchuk, HDR’s global director of design.

“The design of the campus will integrate local Chinese ideals and culture with Western design standards, blending the best of both and resulting in a world-class campus in the truest sense. Most importantly, though, it will facilitate new collaborations among research groups and shorten the time frame between research, production, and distribution of pharmaceuticals,” he noted.

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