A DRUGS firm rocked by a fake medicine probe says it has tightened up controls following the incident.

Brian McEwan, general manager of Waymade, said the company, based in Basildon, already had stringent protocols in place around the drug suppliers.

But in the wake of the investigation, the firm has joined a global and European network of pharmaceutical firms which exchange information about suspect companies supplying counterfeit medicines.

The firm is owned by multi-millionaire brothers Vijay and Bhikhu Patel, who live in Benfleet.

Mr McEwan said: “If anything good has come out of this, it’s we are now part of a network which has got tighter audit trails and information exchanges in place to minimise the possibilities of anything like this happening again. Not that we were lax before.

“Now we have a robust system in place and we are doing everything we can, as you would expect.”

The Echo revealed in June 2007 how a fake version of Plavix was seized by the Medical Health product Regulatory Authority from Waymade, in Miles Gray Road, Basildon Plavix, the world’s second largest-selling drug, used to treat people suffering strokes, heart attacks and artery disease, was one of three drugs which had to be recalled from warehouses across the country after fake versions entered the supply chain.

The fake tablets, which had been imported in good faith by Waymade from French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Aventis, only contained 70 to 80 per cent of the active ingredients used to treat patients, as opposed to the usual 100 per cent.

However, the drugs were not thought to be harmful if taken.

Mr McEwan spoke out about the incident after an official from the MHRA said of the 70,000 packs of all three types of fake drug, 30,000 are still unaccounted for and are believed to have made it into the hands of patients.

He said: “I was a bit shocked when I heard the numbers they were talking about.

“But the quantities as a whole we were involved with were a small fraction of that.”