China Pharmaceutical Equipment Develops Overseas Market

With the advancement of domestic pharmaceutical equipment manufacturing technology, more and more domestic equipment are exported overseas, and foreign equipment purchasers start to regard China as targeted market. According to the 2018 Blue book on China’s health industry, China experienced a rapid growth in the terms of export delivery value in pharmaceutical industry in the first three quarters of 2018.

 As an important branch field of the pharmaceutical industry, the pharmaceutical equipment industry has a growing export. Industry figures show, the average growth rate of annual export delivery value in China’s pharmaceutical equipment industry has reached 23.075%. The data not only reflects the acceleration of the domestic pharmaceutical equipment internationalization process, but also embodies international recognition for domestic pharmaceutical equipment in the terms of quality, technology and service.  

According to information, expanding international market has been a distinct feature of domestic pharmaceutical equipment industry nowadays. Many pharmaceutical equipment companies also are pushing forward the internationalization process of domestic pharmaceutical equipment. “ Two-way cooperation between domestic companies and foreign advanced companies not only facilitates technological improvement and cultural integration, but also upgrades the production technology of the domestic pharmaceutical equipment industry,” a responsible person in a company says.

With years of development, rich industrial experience and continuous innovation, products in a enterprise are exported abroad. The general manager of the enterprise once said in an interview with China Pharmaceutical Network, “As they face with fierce market competition, high cost and other problems, Chinese manufacturing enterprises are difficult to take up a part of overseas market. However, our company builds a stable cooperation with our customers.”

The manager also said, many of Fortune 500 companies not only built factories in their own countries, but also set up factories in other foreign countries. Now, his company has become a global supplier of overseas customers.  

One development trend of the domestic pharmaceutical equipment industry is to push forward the internationalization process. Meanwhile, domestic pharmaceutical equipment companies are producing creative and high-quality equipment to enter international market. But some industry insiders warn that the export growth of domestic pharmaceutical equipment mostly depends on international market scale.

China's pharmaceutical equipment export has been growing in the past. However, in recent years, it shows inadequate stamina and slow growth. This indicates that the growth mode relying on external market demand has its passivity, and that single market demand is no longer the only driving force of pharmaceutical equipment export growth. Diversified international market and creative product technology are two new breakthroughs of achieving continuous pharmaceutical equipment export growth.  

Many pharmaceutical equipment companies are taking an active part in technology innovation. Some pharmaceutical equipment companies take full advantages of advanced technology such as Internet and Internet of Things to break traditional process flow, forming a post-packing industrial robot production line. The production line includes such advanced single devices as blister packing machine, cartoning machine, wrapping machine and robot palletizer.

It is an automation equipment which integrates tray-making, tray-entering, cartoning, coding,  wrapping, code scanning, box-packing, box sealing, binding with stacking. In addition, the whole production line has the advantages of high productivity, good drug safety, strong traceability, small area and low energy consumption.

Based on material nature, production condition and with the help of computer technology, domestic pharmaceutical equipment enterprises devote themselves to special technology research and carry out scientific and complete design for pharmaceutical equipment. Under their in-depth research, pharmaceutical equipment is developing towards multi-function, low energy consumption, automation and pharmaceutical industrial production.

The domestic pharmaceutical equipment export scale expansion and the export speed growth mainly depend on the technical level. And technological innovation is a major trend of the industrial  development. Only standing in the forefront of technological renewal can we better dominate the market. While enhancing confidence of domestic pharmaceutical equipment development in overseas markets, we should keep a clear mind, recognize existed industrial shortcomings, learn from each other's strengths and make up for each other's weaknesses, so that domestic pharmaceutical equipment can shine brilliantly in the international market.