China: Chongqing Brewery expects greater profits from hepatitis vaccine than from beer

Chongqing Brewery Co., Ltd., a local beer producer in Sichuan Province, said that the vaccine business will likely bring more profits than beer, the current major business. However some insiders worry that Chongqing Brewery will fail to get profit from hepatitis vaccine business because the business is too far away from beer, according to SinoCast Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge.

On April 10 the company announced that a new hepatitis B vaccine, which is developed by its controlling subsidiary, has come into the second phase of clinical research. The company forecasts that the vaccine business will likely bring more profits than beer, the current major business.

The annual reports indicate that Chongqing Brewery totally achieved revenue from major business of CNY 1.5 billion (USD 1 = CNY 8.04) in 2005, and got net profits of CNY 79 million.

The governmental statistics show that China is a region with high incidence rate of hepatitis around the world and annual expenditure in viral hepatitis treatment is between CNY 30 billion and CNY 50 billion. Impressively, 70% of the viral hepatitis patients catch the hepatitis B.

Some insiders worry that Chongqing Brewery will fail to get profit from hepatitis vaccine business because the business is too far away from beer.

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