Medicines
Sweden is both the biggest market and the biggest producer
Pharmaceutical industry is a strong and powerful player in Sweden, with the exports of pharmaceuticals amounting to 60 000 M SEK in 2008, twice more than the imports. The wholesale sales of medicines are of 29 400 M SEK (retail sales being of 41 700 M SEK).
AstraZeneca is the market leader in Sweden (12% of the retail market) and the region's biggest pharmaceutical company. The country has tenth of smaller companies active in the field, forming the strongest network in the Nordic countries with 17 000 employees and investing overall more than 15 000 M SEK yearly.
In Denmark, pharma industry is also major employer. The biggest companies are willing to consolidate their position of key players worldwide in specific fields, like Novo Nordisk for diabetes, Lundbeck for neurological disorders or LEO Pharma for dermatology. The market is the area's second biggest, with medicines retail sales exceeding 20 000 M DKK in 2008.
Finland has a fairly small but innovative pharmaceutical industry. The biggest company, Orion, has both proprietary products (notably a key expertise in Parkinson disease medicines) sold in all Europe and a strong domestic market position, being the market leader in 2008 with 9.1% of the 1.97 billion € wholesale market, chiefly as a generic drug producer. Smaller companies are focusing on research and rely on licensing agreements with bigger companies for the development of new drugs.
Norway has a smaller market, gross medicine sales being of 16 900 M NOK in 2007 (retail price, 10 900 M NOK based on gross price). 10 companies, mostly foreign, are producing or developing medicines in Norway. Imports reach the 10 000 M NOK mark, being 3 times higher than exports. Local companies are investing around 1 000 M NOK for research and the whole pharmaceutical industry has 4 700 employees.
Baltic markets are small and rely heavily on imports, covering 70 to 80% of local medicine consumption. The retail medicine sales in Lithuania are just above the 500 M €, the biggest player being the generic drugs producer Sanitas. The market size (retail prices) is around 300 M € in Latvia, Grindeks being the biggest local producer, and 200 M € in Estonia. These markets are experiencing a strong growth.
Icelandic Actavis group has become one of the world's 5 biggest generic drug producers. The group is the country's market leader with 10% of the 120 M€ (wholesale price) of medicines sold in Iceland in 2008 and is exporting heavily towards more than 50 countries.
Changes in the distribution market
Though everywhere retail sales of prescription drugs are controlled by pharmacies, with sometimes the exception of Nicotine dependence treatments, there are different market conditions in every country. In Sweden the historic state retail monopoly is currently being dismantled and a completely different market organisation is due to appear before the end of 2010. In some countries like Estonia or Norway the market is controlled by big distributor groups, sometimes owned by the main wholesalers. Opposite to that, the only significant Finnish network of pharmacies controls only 10% of the retail market.
National and European regulations
Registration and market authorisation for new medicines are controlled by national medicines agency. They follow European Union rules and are all connected to the European Medicines Agency, even Iceland and Norway as members of the European Economic Area.
Reimbursement of medicines remains largely based on national policies, in the same way as VAT rate. Nordic countries have been among the first promoters of generics use, even if that was causing the loss of jobs in the national industries.
Useful Links
Sweden
Denmark
Finland
Norway
Lithuania
Latvia
Estonia
Iceland
Events
15-17th September 2010:
Baltmedica,
Vilnius, Lithuania
1-3rd December 2010:
Göteborg, Sweden
10-13th January 2011:
Helsinki, Finland