In 1993, three pharmaceutical companies were producing praziquantel products under different brand names in the Republic of Korea. Distocide and Cestocide are Shin Poong’s products, Biltricide is Bayer’s, and praziquantel is Dae-woong Pharmaceutical Company’s product. Shin Poong, whose process patent (effective until 1997) is still protected within the Republic of Korea, is the only company producing both praziquantel raw material and finished products. Bayer of Korea (the Seoul branch of Bayer of Germany) and Dae-woong produce Biltricide and praziquantel, respectively, with imported praziquantel raw materials. It is not known where Dae-Woong obtains the active ingredient for its production of praziquantel, although one possibility is Chinese sources.

Table 3.11 shows the production value (production volume ´ market price) of praziquantel finished products by the three producers. The finished products (Distocide, Cestocide, Biltricide, and praziquantel) are manufactured in three different sizes per tablet: 150 mg, 200 mg, and 600 mg. The tablets are sold in various units per pack: 4T (4 tablets), 6T, 8T, 100T, 500T, and 1000T per pack. For reasons related to tax payment, published data on sales volume by pharmaceutical firms are not readily available. This report, therefore, substitutes data on production value for sales data in most cases.

Table 3.11: Production value and market share of praziquantel products in the Republic of Korea

unit: 1 million won

Note: Numbers in parenthesis are values in one thousand US dollars.
Production value = production volume x market retail price.
Numbers in brackets are percentage of market share.

Source: Korean Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association, Annual Statistics of Production, various years.

The market shares of the three producers, and changes over time, are shown in Table 3.11 and Figure 3.2. As shown in Table 3.11, Shin Poong has been the dominant producer in the Korean market of praziquantel products. Its market share, measured by production value, has gone up over the years, with its average around 90 percent. With the entry of Dae-woong Pharmaceutical Co., one of the top-ranked pharmaceutical companies in the country (8th in 1993), into the market of praziquantel in 1993, a different picture of market shares is expected in the coming years. However, with Shin Poong’s process patent still protected within the Republic of Korea and with an insignificant amount of production of finished products by Dae-woong, Shin Poong’s dominance of the praziquantel market is likely to last at least in the near future.

Figure 3.2: Market share among the three producers