The companies plan to invest $50m in the expansion project following the World Health Organization (WHO) approval, reports AllAfrica.
The plant, which currently manufactures six million tablets per day, is expected to produce 18 million tablets of antimalarial and antiretroviral drugs per day on the completion of expansion.
This will include the antiretroviral one-pill-a-day, which is a single dose combination therapy for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, according to Frederick Kitaka, the company chief financial officer.
QCIL chief financial officer Frederick Kitaka told AllAfrica that 60% of raw materials needed for pharmaceuticals are available in Africa including Artemisia, which is grown in Uganda.
Under the third phase, the company will set up an active pharmaceutical ingredients plant, which will extract and purify ingredients from locally sourced raw materials, Kitaka said.