Half of the pharmacy plants in Spain are in Catalonia

Spain has 173 drug manufacturing plants, belonging to 122 business groups, of which 79 (46%), with 15,800 workers, are in Catalonia, according to data presented by the sector's employers, Farmaindustria.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
26 September 2022 Monday 00:40
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Half of the pharmacy plants in Spain are in Catalonia

Spain has 173 drug manufacturing plants, belonging to 122 business groups, of which 79 (46%), with 15,800 workers, are in Catalonia, according to data presented by the sector's employers, Farmaindustria.

"Spain is one of the European countries with the greatest potential for drug manufacturing," said Javier Urzay, deputy director general of the employers' association. "We have a powerful industrial fabric with national and multinational companies that have our country as a key part of their production chain," he added.

According to the study, carried out by the consultancy ManageART, the pharmaceutical industry in Spain has 103 production plants for medicines for human use, 11 for biological medicines, 46 for active ingredients and 24 for veterinary medicines.

The production of these plants exceeded 16,000 million euros last year and grew by 4.9% compared to the previous year. This year, according to industry estimates, the value of production will grow another 8.8%.

According to the employers, the increase in pharmaceutical production derives in large part from the investment effort made by the sector, which has invested nearly 1,000 million euros in updating its plants in recent years. Thus, since 2019 the industry has invested 2,417 million euros and plans to invest another 2,500 million until 2023.

The study highlights that Catalonia is the industrial engine of the sector: it concentrates 79 plants, 46% of the whole of Spain. They are followed by Madrid (23%), Castilla y León (8%) and Castilla-La Mancha (5%).

Spanish laboratories are the ones with the greatest industrial weight in the country, with 106 plants, 62% of the total. Another 37 are from Spanish groups and the remaining 30 from non-European groups. In recent years, the report notes, a new type of owner has emerged: investment funds, which already own 25 factories.

The Spanish industry is also highly internationalized in terms of sales, and exports 75% of production – 60% to countries of the European Union –, so that medicine is already the fourth most exported product in Spain, according to Farmaindustria.

The employer's study highlights that drug factories employ 36,338 people, 4.2% more than in 2019, with jobs that stand out for having salaries above the average. In addition, they maintain thousands of indirect jobs, in supplier companies and outsourced services, so that they support 183,506 jobs.

In the presentation of the study, Urzay pointed out that Spain has "the foundations to become a great drug production hub in Europe", at a time when the problems of the pandemic have led governments around the world to reconsider the Asia's dependence on the supply of essential products, such as medicine.

Urzay highlighted that the Spanish industry has strong points such as the high quality of the plants, competitive costs, the availability of advanced technology and qualified personnel, and the attractive work environment. As risks, in an environment of great international competition, he highlighted the dependence on foreign countries in the supply of raw materials, the need to promote investment in digitization and in biotechnological plants, and the scarce support from the administrations for industrial investments.

The increase in energy costs is another burden for the sector: it has meant an extra cost of some 500 million euros, which the companies are assuming because the prices of medicines are set by Social Security and have not increased.