Italy’s record export to China, all thanks to the anti-Covid drug Corriere.it

Exports from Italy to China have tripled in just over a year. According to Bloomberg reports, since February 2023 they have passed the 3 billion euros, with an increase of 131% compared to the previous year. Epper, compared to January 2022, the same figure stood at around one billion euros. If initially for experts the phenomenon was difficult to understand, it is now clear that the boom is due to the production, albeit extraordinary, of medicines. In particular Paxlovid, an anti-Covid tablet supplied by the Pfizer plant in Ascoli Piceno.

Ascoli’s success in pharmaceutical exports

In the first three months of 2023, the Marche headquarters of the pharmaceutical group produced six million packs, five of which were shipped to China. A business that has raised Ascoli Piceno from seventh (2021) to first place among the exporting provinces for the sector and Pfizer to hire 200 new employees and invest around 36 million euros in the project. In addition to the Italian one, two other European plants have been selected for the making of Paxlovid: Freiburg (Germany) and Newbridge (Ireland). In the Italian city, production started at the beginning of 2022. Previously, foreign exports were around 200 million a month; from February of that year, then, the rise began up to the small maximum in July 2022 of 2 billion euros (almost as much as the entire year 2021, when exports amounted to 2.4 billion).

Paxlovid, Pfizer’s second highest-grossing product

Thus, in Ascoli Piceno pharmaceuticals are worth about 90% of total exports, up from the previous 62% and, as evidenced by the Only 24 Hours, the city appears among the top 20 exporting provinces, surpassing even Parma, the reference center for the made in Italy food sector. In the first three months of 2022, the shipment of drugs specifically to China was worth 249 million euros, just under 7% of the Italian total. In the period between January and March 2023, this value multiplied by as much as 15 times, for a total of 3.7 billion euros. In fact, in one year, 15 million packets of Paxlovid were made and sold. This success was revealed by Pfizer itself, which indicates the anti-Covid tablet as the second highest-grossing product (the first remains the Comirnaty vaccine), from which around 19 billion come. A revealing figure that led the group to exceed 100 billion in revenues in 2022.