As the World Cup reaches its closing stages, we’re running a companion competition of our own: the CDMO World Cup.
Ahead of CDMO Live Americas, we paired up the competing nations and compared what each brings to the pharmaceutical contract manufacturing table. No red cards, no penalty shootouts, just a look at the manufacturing infrastructure behind the countries on the pitch.
Please note: all lists are non-exhaustive in interests of space, and isn’t intended to be taken too seriously!
France vs Morocco
Allez les Bleus ou Dima Maghrib? Two teams with shared history but very different pharma manufacturing stories.
𝐅𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞: 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐲𝐰𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭
From Pasteur to Sanofi, Servier, Ipsen and Pierre Fabre, France has always paired scientific discovery with manufacturing scale. That base built one of Europe’s most mature CDMO ecosystems, covering APIs, oral solids, sterile injectables, biologics, ATMPs, fill-finish and specialist delivery.
Key names include Delpharm, SEQENS Pharmaceutical Solutions, EUROAPI, Meribel Pharma Solutions, Unither Pharmaceuticals, Cenexi, Skyepharma- Fully integrated CDMO, DIVERCHIM CDMO, Ethypharm plus major international groups with significant French sites.
The French CDMO market is forecast to reach US$10.22bn by 2033 at 7.3% CAGR, with the API segment alone hitting US$4.62bn (Grand View Research).
The tournament favourites, France’s edge is breadth and technical depth. Its challenge is cost. Quality, talent and infrastructure come at a price.
𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐨: 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫
Over 50 years of pharma manufacturing experience and a strategic position between Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Key names include international vaccine CDMO MARBIO, Sothema contract-manufacturing, Maphar, Laboratories GENPHARMA, MC PHARMA , alongside international partner-manufacturing operations including Hikma’s Moroccan sites.
Morocco’s edge is competitive costs, regional export reach, vaccine-manufacturing ambition, and a genuine bridge into Africa. Its challenge is maturity. The visible base of Morocco-headquartered CDMOs is still small.
Switzerland v Colombia: Precision v Rhythm
Switzerland: The Precision Manufacturing Giant
Switzerland brings the same thing to pharma that it brings to watches and trains: precision, discipline, and a habit of being very hard to beat.
It’s one of pharma’s original powerhouses. Basel turned 19th-century dye chemistry into a world-leading pharma cluster, giving rise to Sandoz, Ciba-Geigy and Roche, and it’s still at the top table today.
The country has a deep bench of CDMOs including Lonza, Bachem, Siegfried, Novartis Contract Manufacturing, PolyPeptide Group, CARBOGEN AMCIS, Celonic Group, Cerbios-Pharma SA, ten23 health and Interlabor Belp AG.
- Strength: High-value manufacturing across biologics, APIs, peptides, potent compounds and sterile injectables.
- Challenge: Cost. Swiss quality rarely comes cheap.
Colombia: Los Cafeteros of Contract Manufacturing
Colombia is best known in football as Los Cafeteros, “The Coffee Makers”, and its pharmaceutical manufacturing base is brewing into one of Latin America’s more interesting growth stories.
It doesn’t yet have Switzerland’s depth of global specialist CDMOs, but it has a strong domestic base and growing contract manufacturing capability: Sofgen CDMO, Pharmetique Labs, QUIBI S.A. Pharmaceutical Products, Coaspharma, Laboratorios Chalver de Colombia, Fabrifarma S.A., Syntofarma S.A., Arbofarma S.A.S, Colompack and Gonher Farmacéutica.
- Strength: Regional reach, generics, OTC and cost-competitive finished-dose manufacturing.
- Challenge: Moving up the value chain into more specialised and biologics manufacturing.
USA v Belgium: Scale v Specialism
USA: The Global Innovation Engine
The United States is hands-down the world’s largest pharmaceutical market and the deepest biotech financing ecosystem, home to global innovators including Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Amgen, Gilead, AbbVie, Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck and Moderna.
That scientific and commercial base has created one of the world’s most advanced CDMO ecosystems. The US pharmaceutical CDMO market is valued at $38.8bn, larger than the whole of Europe’s $35.3bn valuation (Grand View Research).
The USA is home to CDMO giants including Thermo Fisher Scientific, Catalent, Curia, Cambrex, PCI Pharma Services, Kindeva Drug Delivery, Alcami Corporation, Avid Bioservices, Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing, Lifecore Biomedical and Afton Scientific, to name but a few.*
- Strength: Scale, capital, innovation density and advanced modalities, particularly biologics, sterile injectables, cell and gene therapy, mRNA, ADCs and complex drug delivery.
- Challenge: Cost, plus current regulatory uncertainty. High labour, construction and compliance costs mean the US is rarely the lowest-cost manufacturing option.
Belgium: The Red Devils of Biomanufacturing
Belgium may be far smaller than the United States, but in life sciences it has made a habit of punching well above its weight.
The country is home to major pharma and biotech operations including UCB, Organon, J&J Innovative Medicine, GSK Vaccines, Takeda and Sanofi, supported by strong clusters across Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels.
Belgium’s CDMO and contract manufacturing base includes Ardena, UNIVERCELLS, Quantoom Biosciences, BePharBel Manufacturing SA, Eurogentec, XEDEV and White Raven, alongside international manufacturers with significant Belgian production capacity.
- Strength: Specialist biomanufacturing: vaccines, biologics, viral vectors, RNA platforms, sterile fill-finish, complex formulations and clinical-stage development.
- Challenge: Scale. It’s a world-class specialist hub, but not a broad, continent-sized manufacturing base like the USA.
Spain v Portugal: The Iberian Derby
Spain: The European Scale-Up Hub
One of Europe’s most established pharma ecosystems, with deep roots in generics, APIs, sterile manufacturing, biologics and advanced therapies. The $4bn CDMO market (+7% CAGR) is home to Grifols, ESTEVE, ROVI Pharma Industrial Services, Farmhispania Group, Suanfarma, Medichem, Moehs Iberica, mAbxience, Leanbio and AGC Pharma Chemicals, among others.
- Strength: Scale and breadth, small molecule APIs, HPAPIs, sterile injectables, biologics, viral vectors and a strong clinical research base.
Portugal: The Specialist Manufacturing Challenger
A smaller base than Spain, but Portugal punches above its weight in specialist contract manufacturing. Home to Hovione, Bluepharma, Stemmatters, Sofarimex (Indústria Química e Farmacêutica, Lda), Tecnimede Group, Grupo Medinfar and Laboratórios Basi.
- Strength: Export-oriented, specialist manufacturing: complex APIs, particle engineering, sterile products, lyophilisation and emerging advanced therapy capability.
England v Mexico: Innovation v Nearshoring
England: The Advanced Medicines Hub
England has been one of the world’s pharmaceutical powerhouses for over a century, home to global innovators AstraZeneca and GSK. Combined with the Cambridge–Oxford–London “Golden Triangle,” these companies have helped create one of the world’s deepest pools of pharmaceutical manufacturing talent.
Today, England is home to CDMOs including OXB, Sterling Pharma Solutions, Quotient Sciences, Eramol, eXmoor Pharma, Onyx Scientific, Upperton Pharma Solutions and SGS, while global CDMOs including Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, Lonza, Thermo Fisher, Recipharm and Kindeva operate major facilities in the country.
The UK CDMO market (of which England represents a significant share) is valued at $6.9bn in 2024, forecast to reach $13.2bn by 2033, growing at a 7.5% CAGR (Grand View Research).
- Strength: Advanced medicines: biologics, cell and gene therapy, specialist development expertise and a mature outsourcing ecosystem.
- Challenge: Competitiveness. The UK’s high cost base and post-Brexit commercial environment make new manufacturing investment harder to secure.
Mexico: The Nearshoring Gateway
Mexico has one of Latin America’s richest pharmaceutical manufacturing heritages, from the pioneering work of Syntex in steroid chemistry and oral contraceptives to today’s major manufacturing operations for companies including Pfizer, Sanofi, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck and Eli Lilly.
Mexico’s CDMO and contract manufacturing base includes PiSA Farmacéutica, Laboratorios Liomont, Laboratorios DEFSA, Russek, Bonarum Pharma S.A. de C.V., Servet, Vitae, Laboratorios Unidos GT, Neolpharma SA de CV and Eurofarma México, alongside international manufacturers such as Baxter and Sanofi with significant production capability in the country.
The Mexico CDMO market is valued at $4.0bn in 2024, forecast to reach $7.5bn by 2033, growing at a 7.2% CAGR (Grand View Research).
- Strength: Cost-competitive manufacturing, small molecules, sterile injectables, generics and proximity to the US market.
- Challenge: Building the biologics and advanced therapies capacity needed to compete with the world’s leading CDMO hubs.
Who Wins the CDMO World Cup?
Every match in the CDMO World Cup tells the same broader story: contract manufacturing capability is spread unevenly across the globe, and each region is competing on a different strength, whether that’s cost, capacity, specialisation or proximity to market. And what a diverse, fascinating landscape this really is.
