German drug maker Bayer HealthCare reported sales of 1.46 billion euros ($2.01 billion) in China last year, a "double-digit" year-on-year growth of around 10 percent, Alok Kanti, managing director of the company's China office, said on Thursday.

Sales of Bayer's HealthCare subgroup globally increased by 1.7 percent last year to 18.9 billion euros, the company announced in February.

Along with the announcement of financial results, the company also said Thursday that around 100 million euros will be invested to expand its production facility in Beijing. The plant will produce medicines for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

The expansion is expected to be finished in 2017, said Kanti. Upon completion, the Beijing plant will become Bayer HealthCare's largest production facility in the world. At present, over 90 percent of the company's drugs sold in China, in terms of units, are produced in the Beijing plant, Kanti revealed.

Bayer HealthCare currently has production plants in Beijing, Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong Province, Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, and Qidong in East China's Jiangsu Province.

The German drug maker is increasing its presence in China. On February 27, Bayer HealthCare announced that it would acquire Yunnan-based Dihon Pharmaceutical Group, which is specializing in non-prescription (OTC) and traditional Chinese medicine products.

The two companies did not disclose the financial details of the deal, but recent media reports said that the deal is worth around 3.6 billion yuan ($577 million) and is expected to close in June.

Dihon has products that are very complementary to Bayer HealthCare's product portfolio, and it has infrastructure in smaller cities, which could help Bayer HealthCare expand in smaller cities, Kanti told the Global Times at a press conference in Beijing Thursday.

"China's OTC market has surpassed 200 billion yuan at present and the market may surpass the US as the No.1 OTC market in the world by 2020," Xu Lingni, an industry analyst at the CIC Industry Research Center, told the Global Times Thursday.

Xu noted that cost to acquire an OTC company at present is comparatively low, so the timing is good for foreign pharmaceutical firms to make acquisitions in the sector.

The company has attributed its strong growth in China to innovation capabilities. In 2013, Bayer HealthCare invested over 2 billion euros in research into key therapeutic areas.

Kanti said that despite the slowdown in the overall Chinese economy, China's healthcare sector still has large potential, given that there are still many unmet medical needs in the country.

The company also said that that it is going to bring four new medicines to China in the next 12 months.