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Kodak is branching out to pharmaceutical firms with US investment
Kodak, once a dominant force in photography, is branching out into pharmaceuticals, and the US government aims to provide the firm with a $765 million loan to finance its activities. Kodak would set up a new business unit, Kodak Pharmaceuticals, to develop the materials required for the manufacture of medicines.
Kodak Pharmaceuticals will allow ingredients that have lapsed into persistent national shortages and will be able to make up up to 25% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients found in non-biologic, non-anti-bacterial, generic pharmaceuticals, Kodak reports. Kodak CEO Jim Continenza predicts that Kodak's pharmaceuticals will ultimately account for 30 to 40 percent of Kodak 's revenue.
The $765 million loan is made available under the Korean War-era Defense Development Act, which the Trump administration has already used to speed up the production of ventilators, masks and other medical instruments to help combat COVID-19. Kodak plans to manufacture ingredients for medicines, such as hydroxychloroquine, as part of its medicinal research, according to The Wall Street Journal. President Trump has often advocated hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, but the medication has often been proven to be unsuccessful as a treatment for the infection.
The largely prevalent clinical trials that looked at the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine have demonstrated that it is not successful in coronavirus disease, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during an interview with ABC Good Morning America, according to CNBC.
This is not the first time that Kodak has dipped his feet into pharmaceuticals, but the last time he's been in company for a couple of years. Kodak acquired Sterling Medicine for around $5.1 billion in 1988 before selling it in bits in 1994.
