Ladophar: For Community Health All Year Round

The precursor of Lam Dong Pharmaceutical Joint Stock Company (Ladophar) was the South Central Pharmacy Enterprise, established in the American resistance war in Military Zone 6 (present-day Binh Thuan province). After ups and downs in the development history, Ladophar has always strived constantly with the spirit of progress, self-learning and self-improvement, and emerged to become a prestigious pharmaceutical brand in Vietnam.

Quality makes brand name
Operating in a vast artichoke zone and utilising its experience accumulated in medicine production, Ladophar has boldly invested in pharmaceutical and dietary supplement production and trading to become a leading pharmaceutical company. With its continuous efforts to diversify and improve product quality, Ladophar’s reputation has been confirmed both domestically and internationally with major pharmaceuticals or inputs extracted from local herbs like artichoke, garcinia, lingzhi and ginseng. Its products include Cynaphytol, Bavegan and artichoke tablets, and functional foods are comprised of artichoke tea, Ichogan, liver detoxification, artisanal tube, Herbaga and artichoke candy.

As a pharmaceutical manufacturer, Ladophar has defined the way to survive and thrive: Continuous investment for equipment and technological research and upgrading, application of scientific and technological achievements to production to enhance productivity and reduce costs to introduce good medicines alternative to foreign brands with much lower prices. From this approach, Ladophar has successfully built market zones according to the Guidelines on Good Agricultural and Collection Practices (GACP) to ensure the input supply for artichoke and other plants an guarantee the quality of material zones.

In 2007, Ladophar embarked on construction of a GMP-WHO pharmaceutical factory certified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and powered by state-of-the-art technology. It turned out such medicines as Bavegan, Cynaphytol, cerebral hemorrhagic, Ginkobiloba and artichoke pills. Following this success, in 2013, Ladophar continued to make new breakthroughs when it boldly invested in two first large-scale herbal pharmaceutical factories in the Central Highlands (Herbal Tea Factory and Tea Plant Extract Factory), certified with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certificate. In particular, in 2014, Ladophar invested in automatic bottling lines for oral medicinal products to ensure a closed production that resulted in high-quality, user-friendly products. The company's products must undergo strict quality control, meeting the Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) standards, using High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) or ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry (UV vis). General Director Pham Thi Xuan Huong said, “Ladophar takes care of improving product quality by innovating technology and applying advanced quality management systems like GPs (Good Practices) standards for medicine production and business (GMP, GSP, GDP, GPP, GLP and GACP). For functional foods, we apply HACCP and ISO 22000:2005 quality management systems to ensure food quality and safety.”

In addition to making investment, upgrading technology and equipment, and conducting research and development on new products, Ladophar also focuses on accelerating marketing development to bring products to consumers more quickly with guaranteed quality. At present, the company has set up three branches and more than 5,000 retail outlets across the country, helping Ladophar's pharmaceuticals to be present in all 63 provinces and cities. Not only regaining the domestic market share from foreign pharmaceutical companies, Ladophar has also expanded its market to other countries in the region and in the world. Currently its products are present in European countries (France, Italy and Portugal), South Korea, Thailand and other nations.

Solid integration
In the current trend of international economic integration, the business community in general and pharmaceutical firms in particular are facilitated to take part in markets of its member countries. And, of course, coming with integration opportunities is enormous challenges due to competition in price and quality, labour skills, technology and business management among others. To actively integrate, in the past years, Ladophar has invested in modernising machinery and equipment, upgrading technology, applying advanced quality management systems, and training human resources to raise productivity, lower costs, and create competitive advantages in products and services.

After many years being steadfast to the mission of providing high quality products and services for better healthcare under the light of the business philosophy “For Community Health All Year Round”, Ladophar has brought a wide range of high-quality products, with many essentials stated on the list of the Ministry of Health. And, the ongoing efforts of the leadership and the staff of the Company have been rewarded with remarkable achievements. In the past years, despite the difficult world economy, Ladophar has always maintained a high growth rate in the pharmaceutical industry. The firm has constantly tried to renovate; taken the lead in planting organic medicinal herbs; pioneered innovations in performance, high productivity and quality research to make products of the highest quality for consumers. With higher product quality and service quality as well as higher operating performance, in 2016, Ladophar was honoured to be awarded the Asia Pacific International Quality Award, the Quest for Excellence Award for small production. Ms Huong said that the Asia Pacific International Quality Award is a prestigious international award in honour of outstanding companies which excellently improve their product and service quality, competitiveness, operating efficiency, and regional and global economic integration. Not only appreciating Ladophar's efforts for customers, the Asia Pacific International Quality Award also motivated the company to develop, renovate and affirm its prestige in the market and to colleagues and consumers in Vietnam and in the world. “Companies which want to prove themselves in international integration must always take the lead in all areas and necessarily have suitable business strategies to utilise their strengths in combination with quality and productivity improvement investment,” she emphasised.

To continue those successes, in the upcoming 2017 - 2020 period, Ladophar will capitalise on all resources and competitive advantages such as local pharmaceutical sources (artichoke, garcinia, lingzhi, ginseng, Polyscias fruticosa, etc.); advanced factory, machinery, equipment and technological systems; and professionally trained personnel. It will further research on medicine and functional food production to protect human health and diversify products sourced from local inputs. Additionally, the firm will pay attention to increasing the economic value of artichoke, garcinia and other medicinal herbs to develop core medicinal plant regions in line with the Government’s medicinal plant development strategy, thus helping raise the value of Vietnamese medicinal plants in the international arena and actively contributing to local socio-economic development, industrialisation and modernisation.

Hoang Lam