Drug firm Nicholas Piramal India Ltd said on Thursday it plans to invest about $50 million (about Rs 2.25 billion) in the next two years for developing and manufacturing formulations in the UK and India.

The company has so far invested about $50 million in these countries in the last three years and plans a similar investment in 2007-09 period, NPIL said in a statement.

As part of the investment, NPIL is setting up a sterile supplies plant in Mumbai to be operational by the fourth quarter of next fiscal, it said.

The company would launch its fully integrated formulation capabilities in both existing and new markets of Europe and North America, through a series of roadshows scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2007, it said.

"NPIL Pharma is uniquely positioned to offer integrated formulation services at all phases of drug development...this sets a new and highly competitive benchmark for what CMOs can deliver under the heading of integrated services," NPIL Pharma Executive Director Michael Fernandes said in the statement.

By integrating its capabilities and assets in India and Europe, NPIL Pharma's formulations package now includes API pre-formulation services, formulations development for clinical trial manufacturing and scale-up to commercial manufacture in finished dosage forms, it said.

The company aims to be the market leader in pre-formulations and formulation development to clinical manufacture of capsules, tablets and in sterile aseptic solutions by 2010, it added.