Puerto Rico is home to the manufacturing plants for many of the world’s top pharmaceutical and medical device companies, providing a steady stream of treatments to the neighbouring US market and further afield. Here are four facts about Puerto Rican pharma manufacturing that may surprise you.

 

Fact 1: Puerto Rico is a manufacturing location for more than half of the top 20 global pharma companies

11 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies manufacture in Puerto Rico. Firms such as AbbVie, Amgen, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and Bristol Myers Squibb produce not only small-molecule drugs but also biologics on the island, making Puerto Rico the third-largest biotechnology manufacturer on earth with more than two million square feet of biotech manufacturing space.

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Fact 2: Over half of the world’s top 10 bestselling prescription drugs are manufactured in Puerto Rico

Included in the list of more than 100 Puerto Rico-manufactured pharmaceuticals are five of the world’s top ten bestselling drugs in 2018 (all of them biopharmaceutical products): Abbvie’s Humira (the world’s best-selling pharma product), Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer’s Elquis (#2), Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo (#4), Amgen and Pfizer’s Enbrel (#6), and Bayer and Johnson & Johnson’s Xarelto (#10).

 

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Fact 3: Puerto Rico is the USA’s top pharma exporting region

With USD 13.2 billion of pharma exports in 2018, Puerto Rico is the USA’s top pharma exporting region. Puerto Rican-produced pharmaceutical accounted for 22 percent of total US pharma exports in 2018, far ahead of US states Indiana (USD 7 billion of pharma exports) and California (USD 6.5 billion of pharma exports).

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Fact 4: Puerto Rico is also a medtech manufacturing hotspot

On the medical devices side, 15 of the top 20 manufacturers of class 3 medical devices manufacture in Puerto Rico, and 99% of all pacemakers in the world are manufactured in Puerto Rico by companies like St. Jude and Medtronic.

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