At issue are Medika and Gazcorp, which, from the district of Aveiro and the Porto Metropolitan Area, accepted the invitation from the Angolan company VitalFlow to build and equip the aforementioned pharmaceutical complex and manage its subsequent operation.
The project envisages four distinct units on the same 60,000 square meter plot of land: a factory with the capacity to produce 1.7 billion tablets in the form of tablets or capsules annually, another capable of creating 50 million bottles of injectable medicines in the same period, a third to ensure 17.5 million liters of serum each year and a final one to manufacture 4,745 tons of gases such as oxygen and nitrogen in the same period.
"The VitalFlow Pharmaceutical Complex will have Angola's first hospital serum factory and will drastically increase the country's capacity for producing medicines, significantly reducing the country's dependence on the foreign market, since, at the moment, some 99 percent of Angolan health products are imported," Nuno Andrade, general director of both Medika and Gazcorp, told Lusa.
Injecting around 20 million euros into VitalFlow in a personal capacity, the businessman argues that it is due to the "strategic relevance" of the project that it has a "significant contribution" from the Angolan Sovereign Fund. He says that, by covering part of the total cost of the work, the Angolan government wants to "increase the specialized workforce in the country and reinforce its exports" to territories such as Congo and São Tomé and Príncipe.
With this objective in mind, the project's promoters will invest in "cutting-edge technology, at the level of the best available in Europe and the United States", and will use professionals with "high qualifications" in specialized fields - seeking to meet the high standards of the country's hospital offering, since, for Nuno Andrade, "currently Angola has hospitals comparable to those in Portugal".
The structure to be built in the Luanda Special Economic Zone, next to the António Agostinho Neto International Airport, will thus create 160 direct jobs, of which only 10 will be for Portuguese professionals.
Nuno Andrade highlights that this team will benefit from ongoing training and will also enjoy "particularly pleasant working conditions", since, in addition to more than 17,000 square meters of covered production and its own water treatment plant, the VitalFlow complex will also include an auditorium, canteen, gym, football pitch and a doctor's office capable of performing ultrasounds and electrocardiograms – all set among 4,500 square meters of gardens.
The activity of the four factories is due to begin in November 2026 and the director of Medika and Gazcorp expects to achieve in the first five years of joint operation an "accumulated turnover of 560 million euros".
Created in 2016, Medika – Tecnologia Medicinal registered a large increase in production during the Covid-19 period, suffered a drop in demand in the subsequent phase and closed 2024 with a turnover of 8.4 million euros, 98 percent of which came from sales to the foreign market.
Gazcorp, in turn, was founded in 2023 and at the end of 2024 had a turnover of 5.5 million, of which exports represented 70 percent.
