(Yicai) Oct. 24 -- Sinopharm Group and other Chinese vaccine producers have recently lowered their prices, sometimes as much as by 40 percent, as they vie for market share amid fierce competition.

Sinopharm has slashed the price of some of the vaccines that are not part of northeastern Jilin province’s immunization program, such as tetanus, influenza and 23-valent pneumonia, by between 14 percent and 37 percent, the provincial government said yesterday.

Earlier this year, Sinopharm trimmed the price of its quadrivalent influenza jab to CNY88 (USD12) from CNY128, winning the bidding in eastern Jiangsu province’s bulk buy procurement scheme, the provincial government said on May 20. Other influenza vaccine makers such as Hualan Biological Vaccine, Beijing Kexing Biology Product and Jiangsu GDK Biotechnology had no choice but to follow suit.

And the winning bidder for the trivalent influenza vaccine in eastern Zhejiang province was also Beijing-based Sinopharm, at a price of CNY9.40 (USD1.30) per dose, the Zhejiang government said on Sept. 5.

Sinopharm, which is the biggest supplier of free vaccines, or those that are part of the national medical insurance program, has reduced the price of its jabs in the self-paid market to boost sales, an industry insider told Yicai.

The vaccine industry is facing serious horizontal competition and so for those manufacturers that produce commonly available jabs, they are forced to keep their prices competitive.

People have become more hesitant about getting vaccinated and this reduction in spending has also affected the vaccine market, another person working in the vaccine sector told Yicai.

For those vaccines that have been on the market for many years and no longer have depreciation fees and have completed the amortization of research and development expenses, production costs are low and the effect of the price cuts is relatively small.

But for newly launched products that still have high production costs, lowering prices has a greater impact.

In response to the fierce competition, some vaccine companies have begun to turn to overseas markets. For example, Walvax Biotechnology's 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, which was approved for sale in China in 2020, has been registered in the Sultanate of Oman and many other countries. As of June 30, the vaccine was being exported to 20 countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Editor: Kim Taylor