China's API industry is leading world production says new report

China’s chemical drug preparation industry and active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) industry recorded revenue of 573.1 billion renminbi ($91.5 billion) and 382 billion renminbi respectively in 2013, according to a new report.

The China Chemical Pharmaceutical Industry Report, 2013-2016, reports that China is a big producer of chemical APIs, capable of producing about 1,600 varieties of APIs. China ranks first worldwide in output of several bulk APIs including penicillins, vitamins and antipyretic analgesics, and holds a significant share of the featured APIs like statins, prils, sartans in the world. China produced 2.709 million tons of chemical APIs in 2013.

Although China is the world’s leading chemical APIs supply region, the concentration of China’s chemical APIs industry is rather low due to numerous categories of APIs and limited overall strength of domestic enterprises, which occupy an important place only in single or a few categories of pharmaceuticals market. In addition, under the pressure of both environmental protection and industrial upgrading, many large APIs companies in the country are transforming into drug preparation companies through means such as R&D and acquisitions.