Rolling back the clock 50 years is a real test, no, an impossibility. there are only fragments and making sense of them is - not very reliable.
Were I a fortune teller I would see:
- A trip to Lisbon and staying in an opulent hotel that had impressive copper pieces in the foyer. then off to a business meeting with someone called Hovione, where I met Ivan and his wonderful Hollywood accent.
- And then there was an older man in a blue tunic who was the senior (seigneur) of the Hovione group. We talked product amd terms. Both sides were real amateurs so we ended with expressions of great hope!
- Portugal in the early sixties was high up on the "top ten poor list", so they qualified under the US AID PROGRAM, who supplied dollars to pay Portugal pharma. It was, probably, the catalyst for the development of the Portuguese pharma industry?
- Our chose product entry was tetracycline 250mg tabs., in foil and the boxes all had to have little red, white and blue stickers, that had a symbolic "handshake" on it as an expression of "guess who paid for these?" Hovione staff evidently became quite good at stickering.
- the next memory - MILANO. Meeting Diane for dinner and not understanding how you and Ivan had driven from Lisbon to Milano in some unbelievable and heroic time.
And the next morning, I see us at a chemical factory, on the edge of Milano and meeting Mr. Braun and a Dr. Fiorentino. We walked round the complex, which I remember had many water cooling and mixing tanks that looked sinister and dangerous. Gràce à Dottoro Villax, this was the beginning of the "International Tetracycline Wars" and the "Hovione Caper".
Then it seems to be "Hovione moves to California", (again because of USA eligibility rules i.e. had to be "made in America" but still with the stickers.)
We sold a lot of tetracycline in Vietname. And then one day, the war in Vietnam ended and I left on "the last flight out of Saigon" with an armful of babies, given to us by desperate mothers.
Fast forward to the late 70s/early 80s and an O?Neill factory in New Jersey. an old friend, Jim smith called me to ask what I knew about Praziquantel? the Rockefeller Foundation wanted to find/buy tons of it. Bayer was charging then $4-500/kg. It was for Schisosomiasis and other river parasites. A noble cause which led us to the "Savant of Lisbon", Dr. Villax. You entertained us well, Ivan had found a process independent to that of Bayer and we were, sort of, counting the profits. It was not to be, today the price of praziquantel is $30/40 per kg and my good friend Jim Smith, an ex-colonel in the cavalry (tanks) died in the Lockerbie Pan Am
crash.
Then a huige gap of years, until we met again in Hongkong and Ivan encouraged me to move to Macau. thanks Ivan. And thanks to Hovione GM Carlos who helped me a lot, at the beginning.
It's late, Diane, and I'm off to India in the morning. I hope the content is 2not too disappointing". My generation slipped into various levels of dementia and much has been forgotten. But it's been a nice walk through yesterday. thank you. I hope someone will award you and your children and perhaps a lot of long time employees "Entrepreneurs of 2009". You have really done a remarkable job. so with uyour new chinese partners, I wish you "Ten Thousand Years" and my congratulations.
Pete |