Current status and trends of my country's raw material pharmaceutical industry

2019-02-18 17:07:38

According to statistics from the Price Supervision Competition Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission, my country can produce more than 1,500 raw materials, with a total output of one million tons and an export volume of more than 60%. It has become the world's second largest raw materials producer and largest export country after the United States.

Current development status of my country's raw material pharmaceutical industry

In recent years, with the increasing number of patented drug varieties with expired patents, the varieties and quantity of generic drugs have also increased rapidly, bringing huge market opportunities to the raw material drug market, and the output of raw material drugs has continued to grow.

At the same time, due to the increase in production costs and environmental protection costs pressures in Europe and the United States, as well as the improvement of process technology, production quality and drug administration market registration and certification capabilities of my country's raw material pharmaceutical manufacturers, a large number of raw material pharmaceutical companies have accelerated their transfer to my country, and the production scale of my country's raw material pharmaceutical industry has continued to increase. According to statistics, my country's total production of chemical drugs in 2017 reached 3.478 million tons, an increase of 1.6% year-on-year.

The main business income of the chemical raw materials industry showed a steady increase, increasing from 328.972 billion yuan in 2012 to 573.475 billion yuan in 2017, with a total profit of 48.644 billion yuan, but the profit margin remained at a relatively low level, with a profit margin of 8.48% in 2017.

my country's raw materials industry is currently mainly concentrated in bulk raw materials, and there is huge room for development in terms of characteristic raw materials and patented raw materials. In the chemical pharmaceutical industry, raw materials are conventionally divided into three categories: bulk raw materials, special raw materials, and patented raw materials.

(1) Bulk raw materials: overcapacity, low price

Bulk raw materials mainly include vitamins, antibiotics, hormones and other varieties. Among them, vitamin C, erythromycin hydrosulfate, penicillin, azithromycin, and semi-synthetic cephalosporin are the products with the most concentrated production and overcapacity in the industry.

At present, there are more than 8,000 domestic raw material manufacturers, but they mainly focus on producing bulk raw material with low technical content. With the advancement of supply-side structural reform, the production of bulk raw materials in my country will become more and more concentrated, and the process will be further improved.

It can be foreseen that in the future, the production capacity and output of my country's bulk raw materials will decrease, the supply and demand relationship tends to be balanced, and prices and profits will gradually return to a more reasonable range. The past low-price era will never return, and some raw materials varieties may even lose their price competitive advantages and transfer abroad.

(2) Specialty raw materials: The production capacity continues to expand, and the target is to target the original drug developed for patents represented by cardiovascular, antiviral, antitumor and other categories. The target is to target the original drug developed for patents, with high technological content and rich profits. It is the most active raw material sector in my country in the past decade. It has made great contributions to the rise of Huahai Pharmaceutical, Chuangnuo Pharmaceutical, Jiangbei Pharmaceutical and other companies.

In 2016, my country's export of characteristic raw materials reached US$3.53 billion, accounting for 13.8% of the raw materials. As original drugs with a scale of US$194 billion in the past five years are about to expire patents, more and more domestic companies are focusing on corresponding characteristic raw materials and have started research and development and production preparations in advance. It is expected that the production and export scale of my country's characteristic raw materials will continue to expand and grow in the future.
        

(3) Patented drug raw materials: my country's CMO ranks among the world's leading companies, with a future growth rate of 20% to 30%. In the environment where global production capacity cooperation in the pharmaceutical industry is becoming increasingly close, some multinational pharmaceutical companies have chosen to abandon the original full-industry chain model and shift their focus to market operations. R&D, clinical, production and other links can reduce costs through outsourcing, and patented drug raw materials have emerged.

China's pharmaceutical CMO market has maintained a growth rate of more than 10% recently. From the perspective of market structure, the average growth rate of production in clinical period is 9.5%, while the average growth rate of commercial production will reach 18.7%.

It is estimated that the size of my country's CMO market has reached about 5 billion US dollars. With the implementation and further implementation of the MAH system in my country, it is expected to promote the explosion of the domestic pharmaceutical CMO industry. It is expected to grow at a rate of 20% to 30% in the future, of which patented raw materials account for a large proportion.

The concentration of raw materials and pharmaceutical industry is obvious, but the distribution of enterprises and products is uneven.

According to the statistics of the Firestone Creation database, there are currently more than 2,400 enterprises in my country that have qualifications for drug raw materials production. According to the regional distribution of enterprises, the most distributed raw materials are Jiangsu and Zhejiang, with more than 300 enterprises; followed by Shandong, Sichuan and Hubei.

At present, a national-level Zhejiang Provincial Chemical Raw Materials Base has been established in Linhai, Zhejiang, which is the earliest and largest agglomeration area for the domestic chemical raw materials and pharmaceutical intermediates industry. In addition, with the increase in environmental protection pressure, nearly 100 Beijing pharmaceutical companies have "crowded" to the Bohai Bay, and the raw material base in northern China has shown its prototype.

Today, my country is not only a large-scale raw material producer and raw material exporter in the world, but also from the perspective of industrial concentration, the industrial concentration is relatively obvious. The "Raw Materials Variety and Market Analysis Report" released by Yaosu.com in 2017 shows that the manufacturers of raw materials and related intermediates are mainly concentrated in areas with traditionally developed chemical industry, represented by Zhejiang, Shandong and Hebei.

In the list of the top 50 raw material export companies in 2017, the regional clustering of advantageous companies is still obvious. For example, Zhejiang's Huahai and Puluo, Hebei's Shiyao Group, Shandong's Xinhua Pharmaceutical, Xinfa Pharmaceutical, etc., all ranked well. From a global perspective, my country's raw material pharmaceutical companies have also performed well. According to the US Transparent Pharmaceutical website, in 2016, Chinese pharmaceutical companies accounted for 6 seats in the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the global raw material market. Among them, Zhejiang Province's pharmaceutical companies account for 4 seats in the world's top ten raw material manufacturers.
From the perspective of product structure, the varieties of these companies are mainly concentrated in vitamins, antipyretic analgesics, antibiotics and corticosteroids. Taking penicillin industrial salt and vitamin C as examples, both are the two strategic varieties of chemical raw materials in my country, and are also representatives of serious overcapacity.