The pharmaceutical industry faces a lot of constraints and has different specialties, making it stand completely on a different scale than any other industry types. Pharma industry needs extreme precision and care in each step ranging from collecting the pharma raw materials to get in hand the ready product for the supply.
Let us get in-depth details about the raw materials used in the pharmaceutical industry. The categorization distinct the raw materials from each other.
Generally, Pharmaceutical Raw Materials can be categorized into the following three categories:
- Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs)
- Inactive Ingredients or Excipients
- Packaging Raw Materials
1. Pharmaceutical Raw Materials of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs)
API is one of the main parts of the pharma drug which is pharmaceutically active and is responsible for the drug action. Accuracy and Precision with the raw materials are two main must aspects for while making API.
Strengths of APIs: There are certain standards to determine APIs strength in each drug. Manufacturers are required by the FDA to prove their products potency in labs as well as in real life through patients.
Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients global market is predicted to reach $198.8 billion by 2022 with a CAGR of 6.4%. The main factors driving this growth are patent expiration, initiatives by govt., penetration, and increase in the aged population.
The largest API manufacturers are in Asia, in India and China particularly.
2. Pharmaceutical Raw Materials of Excipients
Excipients also called as inactive ingredients or drug carriers. Pharma raw materials used as excipients consist of solvents and other such carriers. Excipients bring bulkiness and stability in the drug formulation, along with facilitating absorption and preventing denaturation of drugs.
There are guidelines by international pharmaceutical standards for the materials to get qualified as an excipient.
Industry analysts have forecast the excipients market to reach CAGR of 6.53% by 2021 to reach $7.7 billion by 2022 globally. According to reports produced by ASD, excipients global market is being driven through rising oral drugs consumption.
North America has the largest pharmaceutical excipient market share, because of the presence of large excipients manufacturers here and rising pharmaceutical drugs demand. Europe has the second largest share followed by the Asia Pacific.
3. Pharmaceutical Raw Materials of Packaging
Packaging in the pharmaceutical industry also need to be perfect and precise. Raw materials used for packaging in the pharmaceutical industry includes plastics, polymer, glass, aluminum foil, paper and more. Packaging is made a separate category for the pharma because of the use of diversified raw materials.
The global pharmaceutical packaging market demand is estimated to reach above $80bn by 2020. North America and Europe regions have the major share in pharmaceutical packaging materials market.
Advancement in drug delivery technologies is initiating the use of innovative packaging in pharmaceutical sector, increasing the demand for varied packaging materials.