The excellence of the Italian pharmaceutical sector in the Nomisma Observatory dedicated to "Fab13"
The 13 champion pharmaceutical companies with Italian capital grow globally (+12.6% revenues) thanks to export (+14,9%), investments (+25%) and innovation (1.6 billion euros in 2022), confirming the excellence of an industry that over the years has been able to establish itself on an international scale.
It is the photograph ofNomisma Observatory on "Le Fab13: pharmaceuticals with Italian capital", created to analyze the 13 leading national pharmaceutical brands: Alfasigma, Abiogen Pharma, Angelini Pharma, Chiesi Farmaceutici, Dompé farmaceutici, IBNSavio, Italfarmaco, Kedrion, Menarini, Molteni, Mediolanum farmaceutici, Recordati and Zambon.
The report also highlighted how the foreign market represents 72.6% of total sales, well above the national manufacturing average, testifying to a marked orientation of the Fab13 towards competitiveness on international markets.
A growth driven by investments and innovation
The pharmaceutical sector of our country can count on a group of medium-large companies with Italian capital (the so-called “Fab13”) with a turnover in 2022 of 14.3 billion euros, which managed to excel thanks to deep-rooted processes of internationalisation, investments and innovation: “these are mainly family-controlled companies characterized by strong roots in the regional territories in which they are located and in which they have established their headquarters" - has explained Concetta Rau, Head of the Industry and Innovation sector of Nomisma.
According to this study, the unifying competitive lever of pharmaceutical companies with Italian capital is the propensity to invest. If the data on global competitiveness already appear solid, the will to continue with long-term growth is demonstrated by the growth rates of investments which in 2022 amount to €3.4 billion (+25% compared to 2021) with an incidence on annual revenues of 23.7%.
Among the main interventions carried out in 2022, the Nomisma Observatory recorded:
- €1.6 billion to support theR&D activity (+14.5% compared to 2021);
- 1.3 billion euros for theacquisition of companies, products and licenses (+50%);
- 250 million euros for infrastructure improvements, efficiency improvement and expansion of the production areas, as well as for the purchase of equipment and machinery (+21TP3Q).
In particular, the R&D spending trend shows that there has been a new step change just at the same time of the last three years: if the average annual investment between 2010 and 2019 (a period of extraordinary growth for the sector) was around 723 million euro, between 2020 and 2022 the average amount invested each year has almost doubled at 1,404 million.
In the last three years investments in R&D have grown on average at a rate of 13.5% demonstrating the propensity of companies towards this type of economic commitment. “The decade of growth 2010-2019 was evidently driven by investment in R&D. The outbreak of the pandemic, the geopolitical tensions due to the war in Ukraine and the inflationary spiral that was triggered starting from the second half of 2021 did not slow down business investments, on the contrary giving a new impetus. The impact of R&D investments on revenues went from 8.1% in 2019 (pre-pandemic) to 11.1% in 2022”- specified Concetta Rau.
In the “Fab13” employment also increases
Hand in hand with the growth of revenues and investments, Employment also increases of Fab13. From the point of view of employment, in 2022 the 13 pharmaceutical champions employed in the world 
43,736 employees (+1.3% compared to 2021), of which 14,534 units in Italy.
“In an economic scenario still conditioned by multiple factors of uncertainty, the increase in employment in the last year mainly concerned the foreign branches of the companies, while the Italian component employed in the activities recorded only a marginal increase (+0.1%)” – explained Concetta Rau.
Abroad, where companies have numerous production plants and branches, employment has a more commercial profile, while the Italian headquarters and production plants continue to represent the seat of decision-making and strategic processes. In Italy, in fact, the staff is mainly employed in R&D and production activities. Furthermore, it should be underlined that the 95% of the employees employed in Italy by the Fab13 are employed with a permanent contract and almost one out of two is a woman (44%).
The indirect effect on the supply chain and the induced one as a boost to consumption
The importance of the pharmaceutical sector within the Italian economic system - and in particular of the Fab13 - can be measured on the basis of the direct employment impact and also on theindirect effect that is generated on the supply network and on the sectors that participate in the production and marketing chain of a drug: for example i suppliers of basic chemicals and the packing and wrapping business of pharmaceutical products, areas in which Italy boasts manufacturing excellence at a global level.
To this indirect impact is also added a induced effect, in terms of boost to final consumption, due to the increase in the incomes of workers' families along the entire supply chain.
Through the use of Input Output Tables, which make it possible to reconstruct the activation coefficients, Nomisma was able to estimate how the indirect impact on the country system of Fabs13 is worth almost 21,000 employees, to which must be added an induced effect of another 24,000 employees, for a total of almost 60 thousand employees directly or indirectly employed along the activities of the pharmaceutical supply chain.
The prospects of the Italian pharmaceutical sector
The second part of the Observatory explored some key aspects of the entire pharmaceutical sector, focusing on the dimensional structure of companies, employment, added value and exports.
Within the national manufacturing industry, the Italian pharmaceutical sector is structurally distinguished by one company size higher than the average of the other sectors: 38.3% of drug companies employ, in fact, over 50 workers, whereas the share of medium and large manufacturing companies does not exceed 3% of the total.
TO employment level the sector continues to show dynamics: in 2021, the total number of Italian pharmaceutical companies employed over 67,000 people, up by 0.9% on 2020 and by 4.7% on 2011. The latter result, in contrast with the negative data recorded by the manufacturing average (-6.3%) and by all other sectors, with the exception of food, chemicals, machinery and means of transport, the only realities that together with pharmaceuticals show a recovery of ground compared to pre-crisis levels.
Another distinctive element of the pharmaceutical sector is thehigh added value per employee, equal to 150 euros in 2021 (+3.2% compared to the previous year), while the manufacturing average settles at 64.8 euros. If, in 2021, there was a slight decrease in exports for the pharmaceutical sector (-2.2% for a value of 33.2 billion euros), which can in any case be inserted within a gradual return to pre-pandemic levels, the Provisional data relating to 2022 shows a very strong acceleration driven largely by the rise in sales lists, with exports exceeding 43 billion euros.
“Expanding the time horizon, however, it emerges that from 2008 to 2021 the value of pharmaceutical exports has substantially tripled, recording a growth of 178% compared to the 40% achieved on average at the manufacturing level, accompanying the sector on a path of further growth also by virtue of the investments made in recent years to position itself on an increasingly global dimension” – concluded Concetta Rau.
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