Nawah secures the first EDA accreditation as a local CRM producer

Press Release

Cairo on 10.8.2022

Earlier this month, the Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA) has decided to accredit Nawah Scientific as the first accredited producer of certified reference materials (CRMs). CRMs are reference compounds of ultra-high purity & precise concentration, used by quality control bodies to certify the quality of medical products, which is a key step in the process of drug manufacturing and market release.

This accreditation comes in accordance with other several measures taken by EDA to tighten the control on available medical products in the Egyptian market and prevent the use of any inferior-quality source of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

Dr. Omar Sakr, Nawah’s founder and CEO elaborated “at Nawah, we have always had an eye on the fine chemicals industry as a portal to the massive industry of pharmaceutical raw materials. The availability of CRMs is a cornerstone to the pharmaceutical industry. They are used to ensure the quality of raw material used, finished product among other tests. Yet and due to the current challenges in importation, it takes 8-12 weeks for them to be imported, and prices are hiking while the Egyptian pound is undergoing devaluation, which makes the importation both time and money consuming.”

Prof. Ali Halawany, Nawah’s CSO commented “For over 4 years, we have been working silently on building and developing the needed know-how to produce CRMs in house. It wasn’t easy and it came at a huge cost of time and resources but it’s totally worth it.”.

Dr. Sakr added “We were very excited that EDA had opened a call for CRM producers to undergo auditing and accreditation, and we were among the first movers to apply. Today we are proudly celebrating becoming the first EDA-accredited producer of CRMs in Egypt after successfully passing all the rigorous tests by EDA. This opens a 0.5B USD market opportunity for us represented by the CRM market in Africa”.  

Nawah’s plan is to release about 200 CRMs in 2022, moving up to 3000 CRM in the coming 5 years. Nawah financial analysts reported that this project will save the Egyptian pharmaceutical market about 100M EGP in the form of savings in importation costs and preventing delays in market release.