A Glimpse of Hessen’s Pharmaceutical and Chemical Industry

©Hessen Trade & Invest GmbH

Hessen’s chemical and pharmaceutical industry employs around 60,000 people (2016), of which two thirds work in the production of chemical products and one third in the pharmaceutical sector. The industry accounts for 14.6% of all employees in Hessen’s industrial sector, making it Hessen’s largest industrial employer.

Hessen is home to locations of a number of companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry, including Abbott, B. Braun Melsungen, Celanese, Clariant, CSL Behring, DAW, Evonik, Fresenius, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Procter & Gamble, and Sanofi. The undisputed leading location in Hessen both in terms of the number of companies and the number of employees is Frankfurt am Main.

The chemical and pharmaceutical industry’s 2016 revenue of €26.0 billion makes it Hessen’s highest-revenue industry by far, with 55.1% stemming from the chemical industry and 44.9% from the pharmaceutical industry. It should be noted that the significance of the pharmaceutical industry in Hessen is much higher than at the Germany-wide level (26.1%). €17.8 billion of the industry’s 2016 revenue was generated outside of Germany, thereby giving rise to an export ratio for the industry (68.6%) that is well above the average for Hessen’s industrial sector (50.5%). Direct investment by foreign investors in Hessen’s chemical and pharmaceutical industry at the end of 2015 amounted to an impressive €3.2 billion.

The wide range of activities carried out by Hessen’s universities and research institutions lends effective support to Hessen’s chemical and pharmaceutical research landscape. In the 2016/2017 winter semester, around 6,500 students were enrolled in chemical and pharmaceutical studies at Hessian universities and around 5,500 students were enrolled in biology studies.

Further information is available at https://www.invest-in-hessen.de/chemie-pharma.