| By Cindy Wu, Asia Manufacturing Pharma |
| Monday, 21 September 2009 |
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A summit forum on antibiotics recently held in Chengdu, China on September 15, 2009, took stock of the current state of the Chinese antibiotics market, which included looking back at the history of the sector’s development, examining key issues of the day and looking at future trends. In the 60 years since the establishment of People’s Republic of China, the country’s antibiotics market has grown rapidly and become the largest in the world, leveraging its overwhelming advantages in the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients including penicillin, streptomycin,
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tetracycline, oxytetracycline and gentamicin. Sang Weiguo, president of the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association, said that China still lags far behind developed countries including Europe, the US and Japan in terms of research and development of antibiotic products as 70 percent of antibiotic products produced in the country are generics, despite the fast growth of the |
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Chinese antibiotics market. Nevertheless, the country has already broken up the US/Europe “duopoly” in the fields of research and development, manufacture and pricing of several dozens of products.
Chinese antibiotic API manufacturers currently number 181, of which 120 are antibiotics producers. The antibiotics market has reached approximately RMB60 billion (approx. US$8.8 billion) in size, with an annual average growth rate of around 24 percent, according to China Shijiazhuang Pharmaceutical Group Chairman Cai Dongchen.
Annual antibiotic production totals 147,000 tons, of which 24,700 tons are exported. In addition, China’s production of penicillin industrial salt, cephalosporin antibiotics and streptomycin antibiotics accounts for 75 percent, 80 percent and 90 percent of the world’s total respectively.
The Chinese antibiotics sector still faces many issues including excess capacity and pressure from |
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environmental protection regulations,
both of which could seriously curb the development of antibiotic drug makers. Obtaining independent intellectual property rights for antibiotic drugs remains the primary target of the sector.
Cai not only called on the government to strengthen support for the sector by promoting technological improvement and independent innovation and tightening policies on energy saving and emission reduction, but also urged players in the sector to establish cooperative and competitive relationships, helping achieve sustainable development across the entire sector.
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