HMD faces manpower crunch, to reach 1B syringes by June

"We have currently extreme shortages of manpower. To reach our target of 100 crore syringes capacity, HMD needs to strengthen our team and employ 3,200 people but currently have on roll 2,700," Rajiv Nath, Managing Director, HMD, said in a statement. 

"We are 500 people short to achieve our target of 100 crore pcs of auto-disable AD syringes by June this year," Nath added. 

However, amid the shortage, the company managed to timely deliver 21.75 crore syringes by April end to the Government of India, as scheduled, to help the country in its third vaccination drive. 

"We are in the process of immediate recruitment of 500 people to increase production at our factories in Faridabad industrial district in Haryana," Nath said. 

"We are looking for hardworking sincere people from states like Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, UP and Rajasthan that are high school pass and fresher who we will train with requisite skills," he added. 

While talking to IANS recently, Nath said that the company will invest over Rs 100 crore to ramp up its production capacity from 2.5 billion syringes to over 3 billion. 

The company ships out 0.1 ml and 0.5 ml auto disposable Kojak syringes for global vaccination projects in the developing world, for yellow fever, measles, hepatitis B and others. 

This is in addition to Covid-19 vaccination requirements of 0.3 ml for Pfizer's vaccines or 0.5 ml auto-disable Kojak for AstraZeneca/Serum Institute of India (SII) or Bharat Biotech vaccines. 

With over 9 plants, the company has created a niche for their disposable syringe -- DISPOVAN, which is today one of the most popular brands in the syringe market in India with over 60 per cent market share.