Sanofi builds factory in Vietnam for ASEAN markets

French drug manufacturer Sanofi said on Friday that it had begun building a new manufacturing facility in Vietnam to serve the expanding pharmaceutical market in Southeast Asia. The $75 million (58 million euro) factory "will expand Sanofi's manufacturing capacity in Vietnam to meet the fast growing demand of the Vietnamese pharmaceutical market and will serve as an export platform to ASEAN countries," the company said in a statement. The factory in Ho Chi Minh City, Sanofi's second, is due to be completed in 2015 with an initial capacity of 90 million units per year. Sanofi also boasts factories in Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand in the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a market of some 600 million people.