Contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) have been very active in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the last few years, driving consolidation among CMOs, but increasingly also acquiring manufacturing sites from Pharma companies. Considering Pharma manufacturing globally-both outsourced and in-house-how big is the market really?

To give an impression of the market size, we established an interactive map of Pharma plants with manufacturing permits issued by FDA or EMA (see graph in the slider at the top of the page). On the map, each dot represents a manufacturing permit and is placed at the approximate location of the corresponding site. Permits can be filtered by type, by geography of the site, and by governing authority (EMA or FDA).

The number of plants involved in Pharma manufacturing is staggering. FDA and EMA collectively have issued more than 23,000 permits for finished dosage format (FDF) manufacturing.

Naturally, this format has limitations: EMA and FDA permits are shown separately, hence the same site may appear twice, and one site may hold several permits from each of FDA and EMA. Still, even with his caveat, we believe the data gives a vivid impression of the complexity of Pharma manufacturing.

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