Meng Weining, Vice President of Beijing Kexing Holdings (Group) Co., Ltd., accepted an exclusive interview with Xinhuanet

Drug overseas has always been a hot topic in the pharmaceutical industry. Meng Weining introduced that vaccines are also drugs, and there are generally two modes of drug going overseas. First, go directly to overseas products or technologies to conduct overseas trade or overseas technology authorization. The second is to cooperate with foreign partners, which is an industry to go overseas, establish a joint venture in the local area for production, or conduct local production cooperation, such as the first stage of production in China and the next stage to produce overseas, and ultimately achieve the overseas use of the product and achieve the overseas goal.

In the vaccine industry, the World Health Organization's pre-certification is "a stepping stone to open up the international market." Meng Weining said that the World Health Organization's pre-certification is one of the important means of going overseas, and it can also be said to be a "stepchair", but the size of this stepchair requires enterprises to choose products and strategies to go overseas based on their own development, products, target markets and international market competition, so as to maximize the help of pre-certification for going overseas.

Therefore, Meng Weining introduced that Sinovac's pre-certification began in 2011. There are two conditions for WHO certification: one is that the product is in the pre-certification list, and the other is that the Drug Administration of the country where the manufacturer is located must pass the WHO certification. After the two conditions are complete, the enterprises in the country where the company is located can apply for certification.

After careful consideration and evaluation, Sinovac determined that the inactivated hepatitis A vaccine was the first pre-certified variety because the hepatitis A vaccine had a high priority in the pre-certification list. At that time, only one multinational company had completed the pre-certification, and the competition was relatively small, and the product had a good market prospect in the target overseas market. Based on relevant reasons and analysis of its own situation, Sinovac chose the hepatitis A vaccine. Meng Weining shared that as of now, Sinovac's annual export volume of hepatitis A vaccine can reach or even exceed domestic use, which also verifies that the previous pre-certification strategy is successful.

How did Sinovac break through the difficulties in promoting overseas markets? In this regard, Meng Weining said that the vaccine category is both a drug and a differentiation from ordinary drugs. It is used for use by healthy people, especially for children. This means that the real big customers are relevant government agencies such as the Ministry of Health or international organizations such as UNICEF. Therefore, in the process of localization, we must choose a market with a sufficient population size, choose local partners who are more familiar with the local and vaccine industries, reach consensus goals and jointly promote the realization of long-term goals. On this basis, whether it is establishing a localized joint venture or conducting localized cooperation, it will be easier to promote business development overseas.

Overall, Latin America and the Middle East are currently the most important overseas markets of Sinovac. Meng Weining said that the investment in health and health in these regions accounts for a large proportion of GDP; from a product perspective, the number of immunization varieties planned by different countries is also inconsistent; it is related to the main overseas market distribution characteristics of products such as inactivated hepatitis A vaccine, live attenuated chickenpox vaccine, polio vaccine and influenza vaccine. At present, the importance of the Southeast Asian market is also increasing.

Regarding the future prospects for overseas travel, Meng Weining said that the vaccine industry is a highly monopoly industry, with a global market size of about US$50-60 billion and a market capacity of about 6-7 billion doses. Among them, the four major multinational companies account for more than 70% of the market share, and have basically maintained this pattern in the past 20 or 30 years. Chinese vaccine companies are still in their early stages of development, and there is still a certain gap compared with the head. However, Chinese vaccine companies are backed by a huge domestic market, with a complete variety, high production and sound industrial chain, and are able to develop and produce most vaccine varieties around the world. Although it has just started, vaccine companies have clear goals and clear paths to go overseas, and their future development prospects are broad.

From May 9th to 11th, the 2025 World Brand Moganshan Conference was held in Deqing, Zhejiang. The World Brand Moganshan Conference was co-founded by Xinhua News Agency Brand Work Office, China National Brand Network, etc., and has been held for two consecutive sessions. As one of the important activities of the 2025 World Brand Moganshan Conference, the "2025 Brand High-Quality Overseas Overseas Forum" is themed "New Challenges, New Opportunities and New Paths", bringing together the wisdom of all parties to jointly explore diversified development paths for brands to go overseas.

[Editor in charge: Bai Bixuan]