Pharma contract manufacturing market will expand by 5% in 2013

Monday 4 November 2013, Amsterdam

This new report forecasts the world market for pharma contract manufacturing will expand by 5% in 2013. Strong growth for market-leading contract manufacturing organisations (CMOs), including Catalent and Patheon, will drive that sales growth. Both contract active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and contract finished dosage form (FDF) manufacturing will experience strong revenue growth in the first half of the 2013-2023 forecast period. High demand worldwide will exist for generic API and solid dosage form manufacturing to 2017. That prediction and others appear in Pharma Contract Manufacturing: World Market Outlook 2013-2023, published in September 2013.

This study finds API manufacturing services accounted for the largest proportion of CMO revenue in 2012. This will continue to be the case throughout the period 2013-2023. Demand will be strong for highly potent APIs in developed markets. The long R&D pipeline of small molecule, targeted cytotoxic therapies will stimulate that demand, as will investment in complex biopharmaceutical drug development. Fastest growth in the contract manufacturing market will come from the contract FDF manufacturing sector. That submarket will grow with a CAGR of 6.6% between 2012 and 2023.

Richard Lang, a pharmaceutical industry analyst, said: “New technologies will be an important driver for revenue growth for CMOs in this decade. Single-use, or disposable, technologies will play an increasing role in small molecule and biopharmaceutical manufacturing. These technologies will provide cost and space savings for CMOs, as well as providing more-efficient and cleaner manufacturing processes. Product reformulation and a rise in the number of poorly-soluble drug molecules in development will drive demand for niche technologies, such as hot-melt extrusion.

“Other factors that will drive market growth include increased biopharmaceutical drug development. Biologics and biosimilars will dominate treatment in many therapeutic areas in this decade, and the pharma industry continues to invest in developing more-complex and better-targeted biopharmaceuticals. One trend supported by strong investment from CMOs in recent years has been antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). Though there are few commercial products in 2013, demand for clinical-stage manufacturing of these complex molecules will rise from 2015 onwards.”

Along with prediction of the overall world market for outsourced drug production, this new report gives revenue forecasting of 11 submarkets to 2023 at world level:

Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), with sub forecasts for generic APIs, high potency active pharma ingredients (HPAPIs), and related products
Finished dosage formulations (FDFs), with sub forecasts for solid dose forms, injectable dosages, and other agents
Other applications of outsourced production – other services
Clinical manufacturing
Commercial manufacturing.

In that study, the pharma contract manufacturing market is also broken down, analysed and forecasted by drug development stage. In 2013 commercial manufacturing projects account for most CMO revenue. However, improved funding for early-stage projects in the US and EU will drive demand for clinical trial material manufacturing towards the middle of this decade. The number of new commercial projects in the first half of the period will be limited by the lack of clinical-stage funding in the past five years, as well as late-stage failures in Big Pharma pipelines.

The study's investigation also discusses regulatory developments and demand for pharma contract manufacturing services in leading and emerging national markets. The work analyses the US, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK, China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Korea. Developed markets account for the greatest demand for outsourced drug manufacturing. The US and EU accounted for 65% of CMO revenues in 2012. Pharma companies in these markets will increasingly demand high-value, complex manufacturing services, driving market growth. In emerging markets, demand for generic APIs and, from the middle of the forecast period onwards, generic FDF manufacturing will drive growth. China and India are leading supplier nations for APIs but accounted for less than 10% of pharma contract manufacturing demand in 2012.

That new study provides quantitative and qualitative analyses of the pharma contract manufacturing market for the period 2013-2023. It also shows interviews with companies.