1857 - 2003
Zentiva, a.s. Praha – from a pharmacy to a modern pharmaceutical company The roots of the largest Czech pharmaceutical company go back to the “Black Eagle” pharmacy ("U černého orla") that, in medieval ages, was situated in what is known as the Lesser Town of Prague. The oldest written evidence of the existence of this (allegedly) oldest pharmacy in Bohemia dates back to 1488. In 1857 the pharmacy was acquired by Benjamin Fragner (1824 -1886) and later extended by his son Karel Fragner (1861-1926) and, in particular, his grandson Jiří Fragner (1900-1977), who made a crucial decision in 1928 – building a new pharmaceutical plant outside Prague, in Dolní Měcholupy. The village is part of Prague today and the place is now the site of the Zentiva head office. The “Benjamin Fragner” plant started its operation in August 1930. Its profitability was based on solid foundations taking the form of the production of active substances. However, the company conducted extensive research in this particular area, too. During World War II, after the closing of Czech universities in the aftermath of the Nazi occupation, the company became a retreat for many renowned experts, thanks to the owner's understanding and support. The company was one of the first operations in Europe to have isolated Penicillin (under the name BF Mykoin 510). After the nationalisation in 1946 under the Beneš Decrees the plant was separated from the pharmacy. The Měcholupy-based company became part of Spojené farmaceutické závody (SPOFA) and, with its 750 employees, was by far the leading pharmaceutical plant in post-war Czechoslovakia. The need of final drug forms grew consistently, and so the company started considering a massive extension of its manufacturing operations in the late nineteen-sixties and actually completed such extension in 1979. The extension programme also included the construction of modern production facilities with adequate equipment. With the new (extended) plant, the company improved the quality of the manufacturing processes and the final products and multiplied the production volume. As a result, it became one of the largest units with concentrated batch production of medical preparations in the whole of Central and Eastern Europe. The company has been subject to a number of major changes in terms of organisation and ownership since 1989. The privatisation process was completed in 1998 by asserting relevant shareholder rights. Still in the same year, a majority share was acquired by Warburg Pincus, a world-leading private capital fund. The nineteen-nineties saw an extensive modernisation of the company's manufacturing operations in reaction to the ever-growing requirements regarding quality, safety, standardisation and reproducibility of internal processes. In 1993, as a result of the said modernisation, the company received its first Best Manufacturing Practices Certificate under the WHO standard for the production of antibiotics, as the very first manufacturing operation in the Czech Republic to receive the certificate. From 1997, all Léčiva plants were certified. Comparably important was the company's return to environmental responsibility. Receiving the ISO 14 000 certificate in 2000 completed the process of transformation to a modern, progressive and dynamically growing pharmaceutical company that meets all EU requirements and regulations regarding pharmaceutical production. As a result, former Léčiva entered the third millennium as a modern, fully competitive company that is a market leader in the Czech Republic and has a strong position in Slovakia. In 2003 the company became one of the pillars of the newly-built pharmaceutical group Zentiva. |