The Trade Promotion Section of the Italian Embassy has organized a national pavilion at the 20th edition of CPHI JAPAN (19-21 April 2023) with 13 companies. The aim of the participation to the tradeshow was to promote the excellence of Made in Italy, to show the high level of development achieved by Italian production techniques, and to strengthen the presence of the Italian pharmaceutical industry in the Japanese market, increasing the business opportunities for the companies.

Italy has historically been the world's most important supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredients. This leadership had its origin in the country's well-established chemical culture, with numerous pharmaceutical industries of international standing, together with cutting-edge chemical equipment manufacturers, as well as the quality of university teaching. The international recognition is supported by the export figures, which account for about 85% of the turnover of the companies in the sector (of which about 18% to Japan).

This result has been determined by the high skills of the professionals working in the sector, by the development of innovative technological solutions, and by the quality and reliability of the products: winning factors that allowed the Italian companies to achieve and maintain a prestigious position on the international scene, even in extremely strict and controlled markets such as the Japanese, the European and the American one.

Italian companies in the sector are mostly medium-sized. Some of them are part of large pharmaceutical multinationals, others of important national pharmaceutical groups, and others are independent.

The target sector is mainly the pharmaceutical one, which has two main segmentations: the generic drugs and the “custom manufacturing” production, i.e. the preparation of intermediate products and active ingredients for patent-holding pharmaceutical companies.

In 2022 Italian pharmaceuticals and organic chemicals represented one of the main items of Italian exports to Japan, ranking among the top ten items of Japanese imports from Italy.

Published: June 2023