Export boom to China, mystery revealed: thanks to the anti-Covid tablets produced in Ascoli

The production of Paxlovid

In the first three months of 2023, the production of Paxlovid in the Marches continued, with a production of six million packs, five of which were directed to China. With striking results: if in the first three months of 2022 the sectoral export of drugs to Beijing was worth 249 million euros, just under 7% of our total exports to the country, between January and March 2023 the value multiplied 15 times to 3.7 billion.

The origin of the shot, in 2022, is represented by the fifteen million packs of Paxlovid made in the plant last year. Not exceptional data in terms of quantity, for a site used to producing seven times higher volumes, but which in terms of value have a very different meaning.

The three Pfizer offices

Ascoli, Freiburg and Newbridge (Ireland) are the three locations that Pfizer has selected in the world to produce the new antiviral drug, developed to offer a five-day course of treatment in the early stages of Covid. Production in the Marche region launched at the beginning of 2022 and with an immediate impact on global provincial exports. If Ascoli in the past traveled around 200 million foreign sales per month (2.4 billion total exports in 2021), the turning point is visible from February 2022, with values ​​multiplied by five, up to the peak of two billion July, almost as much as the entire previous year’s value. As a result, pharmaceuticals now arrive in the area to be worth 90% of total exports (from 62%) and Ascoli, for the first time in its history, appears among the top 20 exporting provinces, even surpassing a key district in the food made in Italy like Parma.

Pharmaceutical sales last year concentrated in Europe (3.6 billion in the Belgian hub, 1 billion in Germany, 1.3 in London) but actually directed all over the world, even in countries that were almost absent from the radar in the past. South Korea, for example, has gone from less than a million to nearly 600, Taiwan from two to 530.

Pfizer’s strategy on the Marche site was accompanied by huge investments, 40 million dollars for new production lines and 200 hires to be able to manage the night shifts made necessary. A demanding job, that of adding a “running” production, actually baptized “lightspeed” within the project, due to the need to make the product available as soon as possible.