Page 17 - Sphere No.20 (Nov 2007)

SPHERE 15
mission with passion, imagination, creativity and dedication.”
The seeds of the Chi-Med project were sown when CEO Chris-
tian Hogg was working for a US multinational in Guangzhou in
southern China. It was there that the Scotsman met his future wife,
a Frenchwoman working in the cosmetics business, and became
intrigued by the potential of the Chinese consumer market, in par-
ticular its traditional medicine industry.
His interest in the industry dovetailed with work initiated in
1998 by Hutchison Whampoa China under its Managing Director,
Simon To, to explore the potential of TCM.
Chi-Med was formed in 2000 with Hutchison as
the major shareholder and it was soon tackling
the enormous task of helping to modernise the
TCM industry and carrying out research to see
which compounds were most effective. “It has
never been done before. It is a massive intellec-
tual challenge modernising and globalising tra-
ditional Chinese medicine,” says Mr Hogg. “We
believe there is a big opportunity and we have
been encouraged by the progress we have made in
the past seven years.”
The fledgling company decided the best
way to learn about TCM was from ex-
perts on the inside, so it went on a spree
of buying existing companies, with
the aim of upgrading their pro-
duction, distribution and market-
ing facilities to the international
standards practised in Hutchison
Group companies.
It was decided the headquarters
for the China operations would be
at one of the newly acquired compa-
nies, Hutchison MediPharma Limited in
Pudong, Shanghai, which later became the
site for a USD30 million world-class research
and development laboratory.
“We built our own organisation of 400
medical representatives across China,” says
Mr Hogg, 42. “We got a foothold in the indus-
try and it gave the R&D a bit more of a base to
start from. If we were going to start pioneering,
we had to be in the industry. We felt for there to be
a USD15 billion industry in Chinese traditional medicine,
there must be some efficacy in some of these products.”
To date, no China medical brand has become a global house-
a great help during chemotherapy.