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Huons eyes $750M in sales with growth in medical supplies, beauty

Published: 26 Sep. 2023, 14:07

Huons Global's office building in Pangyo, Gyeonggi [HUONS GLOBAL]

Huons is pursuing an ambitious blueprint to expand within high-growth sectors with the goal of achieving one trillion won ($750 million) in sales.

The leading local drug maker has continued expanding its strategic investments and new pipelines through open innovation for the past decade.

As a testament to the success of company’s management approach built around H.O.P.E — Harmony, Overcome, Pinpoint, Efficiency — Huons’ holding company, Huons Global, achieved record high sales of 664.4 billion won in 2022.

This result continued its solid business expansion, with a 15.6 percent increase in sales and 77.2 percent growth in operating profit in the second quarter of 2023.

As core business sectors, medical supplies and the beauty and well-being sectors generated the highest profits, reaching 213.8 billion won and 175.6 billion won respectively.

The medical supplies sector was primarily driven by the growth in anesthesia sales. These rose by 40 percent compared to the previous year, due to increased exports of anesthetic injections mainly to the North American region, recording 12.3 billion won of annual sale.

The figure is projected to jump further as lidocaine local anesthesia also received approval from the Canadian government.

In particular, boosted by the rising trend of self-medication after Covid-19, a significant sales growth in health functional food alongside beauty and medical sector is anticipated.

Huons’ award-winning health supplement Elruby Menolacto Probiotics, a representative product for soothing menopausal symptoms, is considered a mega brand itself, reaching cumulative sale of 100 billion won.

Encouraged by Menolacto’s success, Huons targeted the market for male menopause health with its Quisqualis Extract Powder product.

The patented product, which recently entered the U.S market, has been shown to effectively mitigate various prostate-related discomforts in daily life, generating expectations of high profits as prostate health issues are a common concern among middle-aged men.

Humedix, a major listed subsidiary of Huons, specializes in the production of fillers and Botulinum toxin, marketed as Elavie Premier and Liztox respectively, to meet the increasing global demand for aesthetic products.

The completion of Humedix's second factory at the end of 2017 expanded its finished product packaging line and facilitated the expansion into the ophthalmic drug Contract Manufacturing Organization (CMO) business, which is one of its secured future strategic ventures.

Huen IVH ER, developed in-house by Huons Meditech, marks a new era in domestically-produced space sterilizers, which were previously monopolized by global companies.

In the beauty sector, the third-generation automatic injection device, Derma Shine PRO, is known for its excellent skin moisturizing effect for the entire face by injecting Elavie Balance, a high-molecular, high-concentrated hyaluronic acid.

BY KIM SU-HYEON [[email protected]]