Excipients
Europe leads the way in the €10Bn Global Excipient’s market
Strengthening Europe’s excipient sector is critical to securing patients’ access to medicines, sustaining innovation, and ensuring global competitiveness.
Driving Innovation and Safety:
The Critical Role of EUropean Pharmaceutical Excipients
What are pharmaceutical excipients?
EU-manufactured excipients are essential to the safety, performance and scalability of modern medical products. Strengthening the EU’s excipients industry is critical to sustaining pharmaceutical innovation, supply security and global competitiveness. They:
Ensure stability and integrity of APIs throughout shelf life
Control delivery and releaseto achieve the desired therapeutic effect
Enhance bioavailability of complex and poorly soluble molecules
Improve patient usability and adherence
Enable robust, cost-effective and scalable manufacturing
Alongside APIs, pharmaceutical excipients are essential to medicinal products manufacturing—supporting innovation, supply resilience, and Europe’s strategic autonomy while ensuring medicines are stable, effective, and safe for patients.
In every medicinal product, the API is the payload, delivering the therapeutic effect that treats, prevents or manages disease. Excipients are the propulsion system, enabling medicines to reach their destination safely and effectively.
Pharmaceutical excipients at a glance
%
Up to 95% of a medicine’s mass is excipients
Global market size
External Market Report - Pharmaceutical Process Materials Global Market Size and Dynamics - 2024 - Oliver Wyman
%
With around 38% of global market share, Europe is the largest regional market for pharmaceutical excipients
Pharma Excipients Market to Project USD 16.12 Bn by 2035
Diverse origins
synthetic, bio-based and mineral
Excipients power innovation in modern medicines
Enable delivery of complex APIs
Unlock advanced drug delivery systems
Offer patient -friendly solutions
Innovative excipients enable more patient-friendly options, improving access and adherence. Example: they can allow biologics to be taken orally instead of by injection, maintaining the same therapy with greater convenience for patients.
EU-manufactured excipients
A global benchmark for sustainability, quality and supply security
Rigorous EU regulatory and quality standards, including broadly applied voluntary schemes3
Leadership in bio-based
and sustainable materials
Fully transparent
and traceable supply chains
Structurally lower carbon footprint
Strong social and governance standards
Excipient are subject to the scrutiny of multisector EU regulatory bodies. Given the diverse origin of excipients, IPEC & EXCiPACT define guides and standards to define the appropriate GMP, GDP & Quality Standards, with high uptake of EXCiPACT Certifications among European pharmaceutical excipients manufacturers.
The EU pharmaceutical excipients industry
With a global market size of approximately €10 billion annually, excipients underpin the development, manufacturing and supply of modern medicines. As the second largest excipients market globally, Europe plays a central role in:
Ensuring secure and reliable supply chains
Supporting innovation in advanced therapies and complex formulations
Maintaining high quality and regulatory standards
However, this position is not guaranteed. Increasing global competition, cost pressures and shifting supply chains risk eroding Europe’s leadership.Sustained investment and policy support are essential to:
Ensure long-term patient access to safe and effective medicines
Safeguard Europe’s strategic autonomyin medicines
Maintain a competitive and innovative industrial base
Five levers, one mission.
Elevating awareness of excipients
Excipients are essential to patient safety, medicine efficacy and supply security a strategic sector in which the EU is a global leader.
Shaping EU policies
Strengthening competitiveness, supporting innovation and attracting investment in the sector.
Advancing sustainability
As a global differentiator, not a hurdle.
Driving collaborative dialogue
With policy makers and industry stakeholders.
Complementing IPEC Europe’s work
Ensuring a 360° representation of the sector vis-à-vis regulatory and business requirements.
Europe leads the way in the €10Bn global excipients market.
Strengthening Europe’s excipient sector is critical to securing patients’ access to medicines, sustaining innovation, and ensuring global competitiveness.
Source: External Market Report - Pharmaceutical Process Materials Global Market Size and Dynamics - 2024 - Oliver Wyman