FRANKFURT, June 22 (Reuters) - Bayer rejected a newspaper report over the weekend that its pharmaceutical unit anticipated lower demand for its contraceptive pills amid growing pricing pressure in the economic crisis.
"Revenue from our Yasmin product family continues to rise as planned," a Bayer spokesman told Reuters on Sunday.
Berlin-based newspaper Der Tagesspiegel in its Sunday edition cited sources close to the company as saying that the unit, Bayer Schering Pharma, planned to cut production by a quarter this year to 180 million packing units, and work in three shifts instead of five.
The company spokesman, however, said that Bayer was making the pills in three shifts per day as before and was switching to a five-shift rota only in times of peak demand.
Yasmin is Bayer's best-selling pharmaceutical product group. In the first quarter of 2009, Bayer reported sales of 319 million euros ($443.2 million) for the Yasmin range, a 7.4 percent year-on-year gain.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger; editing by John Stonestreet)