Chennai, Oct 13 (IANS): Medical syringe major Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices Ltd (HMD) is in the process of expanding its cannulas (needle points) and needle capillary tubing production capacity, said a top company official.

"Our capital expenditure last year was Rs 100 crore and this year, it will be over Rs 50 crore. The total capex will be Rs 150 crore on syringes and on the backward integration," Managing Director Rajiv Nath told IANS.

He said a new 1.5 lakh square feet factory within the existing 11 acre complex at Faridabad (Haryana) will be commissioned by January 2022 to increase capacity from four billion cannulas per annum to six billion per annum.

The capex will be funded internally, Nath added.

On October 11, the company achieved a milestone of supplying 500 million 0.5 ml auto disable (AD) syringes to the government to help vaccinate over 685 million people till date to support the massive vaccination campaign to eradicate Covid-19.

The next lot of 16.3 million syringes has been inspected and is ready to dispatch.

According to Nath, the company is on track to produce and supply outstanding orders of 310 million 0.5 ml Kojak AD syringes by 2022 beginning, hopefully by January end.

He requested the Central government to place orders for syringes with the manufacturers in India well in advance so that the latter could ramp up supplies or allocate supplies for the government.

Nath said with the Central government planning to resume export of surplus Covid-19 vaccines in the fourth quarter of 2021 in order to fulfill the commitment of India towards COVAX, HMD is confident that India will also be in a position to export some syringes as part of 'Vaccine & Syringe Maitri'.