Cogent Glass today inaugurated its Rs 200-crore manufacturing facility in Addakal mandal of Mahboobnagar in Telangana district.

The facility was inaugurated by the Telangana Chief Minister, K Chandrasekhara Rao.

Located on the Hyderabad-Bangalore national highway, the facility is expected to provide direct employment to 450 workers and indirect employment to over 1,000 people.

The facility has a production capacity of one million pieces a day of Type I moulded vials and half-a-million pieces of tubular glass containers for the pharmaceutical industry.

Oaktree Capital investment

Established in Hyderabad in 2010, Cogent was acquired last year by Oaktree Capital Management, a US-based investment firm managing over $80 billion in assets and with several investments in the packaging sector.

Oaktree had also invested in the French firm SGD which is a leading manufacturer of glass for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.

SGD Group will invest an additional Rs 200 crore to double the capacity at its Adakkal facility built by its affiliate Cogent Glass.

Group CEO Ashok Sudan said the firm would hire 500 more in the next three years.

Infrastructure at Vemula plant

The infrastructure at Vemula plant includes batch plant from Germany, glass melting from Italy, IS machines for moulded vials from Sweden, inspection machines from France and tubular conversion machines from Italy and is spread over 30 acres owned by Cogent Glass Ltd.

“The plant in Vemula will produce high quality moulded Type I glass vials as well as tubular glass vials and ampoules for the pharmaceutical industry. It has become the first in the world to successfully produce both moulded glass vials and tube from a single furnace,” a top company executive had said on Thursday.

Currently, Telangana produces approximately 1-5 Million glass vials for the pharmaceutical industry.

The pharmaceutical packaging industry in India is estimated to be worth about Rs 1,100 crore and growing at a rate of 17 per cent.

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