At present, dozens of natural plant medicines have been included in the medical pharmacopoeia of European Union countries. According to the organizing committee of the ****** International Science and Technology Conference on the Modernization of Traditional Chinese Medicine, about 4 billion people around the world are using natural medicines, and the sales of natural medicines account for about 30% of the global total pharmaceutical sales. According to NutritionBusinessJournal, global sales of botanicals totaled 18.5 billion euros in 2000 and are growing at an average of 10% a year. Of this, European sales accounted for 38%, or about 7 billion euros, for the global **** plant medicine market. In 2003, the total value of over-the-counter plant medicines in Europe was approximately 3.7 billion euros. In recent years, botanical medicine has been paid more and more attention and favored in Europe, the development speed has been faster than chemical drugs. In Britain and France, for example, the purchasing power of plant medicines has risen by 70% in Britain and 50% in France since 1987. The larger European botanical medicine markets (Germany and France) are consolidating, and the smaller markets are showing strong growth.
In 2005, sales of plant medicines accounted for about 30% of the total global pharmaceutical sales, which exceeded $26 billion. The growth rate of the botanical medicine market is significantly higher than that of the world pharmaceutical market, with an average growth rate of about 10% to 20%. Of the $26 billion market share, the European market accounts for 34.5 percent, or nearly $9 billion.
The sales volume of the world botanical medicine market is also increasing year by year. In 2005, the global botanical medicine market was 26 billion US dollars, of which Europe accounted for 34.5%(Germany and France accounted for 65%), North America accounted for 21%, Asia accounted for 26% and Japan accounted for 11.3%. The growth rate of the global plant medicine market is 10% ~ 20%, and the growth rate of the global plant extract market is 15% ~ 20%.
In the European plant medicine market, Germany and France have always been the main consumer of plant medicine. In 2003, the European market position of ****** was Germany (42% of the total European market), France (25%), Italy (9%) and the United Kingdom (8%). In 2005, Germany and France accounted for about 35 percent and 25 percent of the European herbal medicine market, followed by Italy and the United Kingdom with 10 percent, followed by Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium. Currently, the German Health Ministry has approved about 300 herbal medicines for use, and 35,000 doctors use them. In Germany, patients can reimburse about 60 percent of the cost of medicine using botanicals. According to the government of France, two of the top 10 selling drugs of medical insurance in France in 2004 were natural medicine derivatives.
Europe supplies only two-thirds of the nearly 3,000 medicinal plants it uses, with the rest imported. In 2000, the EU imported 117,000 tonnes of raw plant medicines with a value of US $306 million. The main importers are Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Spain. In the European Union market, the sales of plant medicine raw materials amounted to 187 million dollars, of which our country accounted for 22 million dollars, ranking fourth.