List of the 200 Largest Pharma Companies in Germany [2023]

List of the 5 largest pharmaceutical companies in Germany

According to the Federal Statistical Office, there are around 580 pharmaceutical companies in Germany. In 2019, they achieved a total turnover of around 41.5 billion euros with over 121,000 employees. Here is an overview of the 5 largest German pharmaceutical companies:

#1: Boehringer Ingelheim AG & Co KG, Ingelheim: revenues of €19 billion (2019)

Boehringer has been in business in Ingelheim since 1885. The family-owned company is the leading research-based pharmaceutical manufacturer in Germany. Boehringer produces a wide range of medicines: prescription drugs, self-medication drugs and animal health products. In the industrial customer business, biopharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical production and pharmaceutical chemicals are important business areas. The company employs around 51,000 people.

#2: Bayer Pharma AG, Berlin: revenues of €18.0 billion (2019)

Bayer Pharma was created in 2006 through the merger of the pharmaceutical division of the chemical company Bayer with Schering. With around 40,000 employees and approximately 100 subsidiaries worldwide, the company forms a subgroup within Bayer. The Bayer subsidiary is part of the Pharmaceuticals Division. Its operating business comprises Diagnostic Imaging, General Medicine, Specialty Medicine and Women’s Healthcare.

Update 2023: Bayer and the American Alphabet Group announce in early 2023 that they are launching a collaboration with high-performance computing power from the Google Cloud. The aim is to accelerate in-silico research and development and to exploit the latest opportunities in computer-aided drug discovery.

#3: Merck KGaA, Darmstadt: revenues of €16.2 billion (2019)

The chemical and pharmaceutical company Merck emerged from a pharmacy founded in Darmstadt in the 17th century. The descendants of the founder Friedrich Jakob Merck are still the owners of the company. Today, Merck has 57,000 employees, a fifth of whom are in Germany and nearly 9,000 at its headquarters in Darmstadt. The business is divided into the Healthcare, Life Science and Performance Materials divisions.

#4: Novartis Deutschland GmbH, Nuremberg: revenues of €4.1 billion (2018) / $47.4 billion consolidated sales (2019)

Novartis Germany is the German subsidiary of the Swiss Novartis Group. The latter was formed in 1996 from the merger of the Basel-based chemical and pharmaceutical groups Ciba-Geigy AG and Sandoz AG. The chemicals business was then largely spun off, while the pharmaceuticals business was expanded. Among other things, the entire generics division of BASF was taken over in 2000. Novartis offers products in the fields of generics, ophthalmology, over-the-counter drugs, vaccines and diagnostics.

#5: Roche Deutschland Holding GmbH, Grenzach-Wyhlen: revenues of €1.8 billion (2018) / CHF 61 billion consolidated sales (2019)

Roche Deutschland Holding bundles the German business activities of the Swiss pharmaceutical group Hoffmann-La Roche. With sales of 61 billion CHF (2019) and over 94,000 employees, it is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. Roche Deutschland has almost 17,000 employees and includes the subsidiaries Roche Pharma AG, Roche Diagnostics GmbH, Roche Diagnostics Deutschland GmbH and Roche mtm laboratories AG.

Database of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Germany – available for immediate download as Excel file

Our comprehensive database of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Germany provides easy access to this difficult to grasp market. The list is available for purchase through our online shop and can be downloaded as an Excel file directly after payment. This way you can start working immediately and benefit from the clear structure of our database. The data can be easily sorted, filtered and edited, so that you can prepare the information according to your requirements. In addition to the contact details of the companies, the list also contains the revenues of the last few years as well as a short description of the activity according to relevant keywords. If you have any questions about the address database or our approach, we look forward to hearing from you.

It has never been easier to identify and contact relevant companies from the German pharmaceutical industry

Lead generation in the pharmaceutical industry in Germany has so far been a time-consuming action. Sales and marketing managers depend on comprehensive industry overviews to contact the right companies. Lead generation plays a central role, especially in industries that are difficult to understand. Frequently, only insufficient or outdated industry lists are available, so that sales employees often have to take over the market analysis on their own. With our list of the top pharmaceutical companies in Germany, we relieve you of the hours of manual research. You can immediately start with the actual work and contact the appropriate companies. Thanks to the indication of the main focus of activity of the listed pharmaceutical companies, you can identify and filter out the relevant companies with just a few clicks.

This information is included in the list of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Germany

• Company name and legal form
• Field of activity (biopharma, immunopharma, psychotropic drugs, veterinary medicine etc.)
• Sales in million EUR (2015, 2016. 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020)
• Number of employees (according to the last annual report)
• General contact information (address, e-mail, telephone number, URL)
• Names of the executives

The list of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Germany is the optimal choice for sales, business development and consulting

Research Germany is the market leader for industry and investor lists in Germany and has been working with successful companies and management consultancies for years. Our databases are a real relief, especially for employees in sales and business development. The topicality of the data and the comprehensive coverage of branches which are difficult to understand, help enormously in the acquisition of new customers. We also work closely with consulting companies, strategy consultancies and personnel consultancies. The simple purchase of our lists via our online shop saves time and money. This applies not only to the list of the largest German pharmaceutical companies, but also to numerous other databases in our shop. These include the list of the most important food producers or the list of the largest German chemical companies.

Comprehensive industry overview including market development (revenue for every company from 2015 to 2019)

You are not necessarily looking for contact details in the German pharmaceutical industry, but would like a comprehensive overview of the entire industry? Even then, our list of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Germany is ideal. Based on the revenue of the last years as well as the number of employees according to the last annual report, you can immediately see differences in size and market shares of the individual players. You no longer have to spend hours struggling through annual financial statements and paid databases. Even if we can support you with further analyses and reports, we are happy to help you. Within the scope of individual orders we have already been able to relieve many customers of tedious work.

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For the research team of Research Germany, customer satisfaction is the main focus. This applies both before the purchase and after the purchase of our lists. If you would like to convince yourself of the structure and data quality of the list of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Germany, we will be happy to send you a free preview file. For this purpose, a short e-mail to contact[at]researchgermany.com is sufficient. Our team will also be happy to help you with any other questions you may have. After purchasing our list, our much praised service will of course continue. So that you always work with current data, you will receive all updates and extensions of the database free of charge within one year after the purchase of the list. You do not need to do anything else for this. You will receive a short e-mail from us whenever an updated file is available.

Image sources: Louis Reed, Hans Reniers

 Map showing the distribution of the largest pharmaceutical companies’ headquarters in Germany:

Distribution of German pharmaceutical companies by federal state: most players are from Bavaria and Hesse

With our list of Germany’s largest pharmaceutical companies, we cover the entire country. To give you an idea of our list and the information it contains, we present the distribution by state in the graph below. You may see a clear pattern when it comes to regional distribution of the main players. Most of the pharmaceutical companies are located in Bavaria, followed by Hesse, Northrhine-Westfalia and Baden-Württemberg. Other German federal states play a minor role when it comes to the presence of pharmaceutical firms.

The German pharmaceutical industry: Statistics and facts

The production of pharmaceuticals has a long and great tradition in Germany. Some well-known pharmaceutical companies in the country have emerged from pharmacies that were founded centuries ago. Apart from a few large players in the market, the pharmaceutical industry is characterized by medium-sized companies.

According to the BVI industry association, there are hundreds of pharmaceutical companies in Germany. More than two thirds of them have less than 100 employees, another quarter between 100 and 500 employees. In 2018, a total of more than 120,000 employees worked in the pharmaceutical industry. It produced drugs to the value of 36.1 billion euros. The largest German pharmaceutical company is Bayer, although the Bayer Group is also active in other areas of the chemical industry. Next in line are Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck KGaA and Fresenius Kabi as part of the Fresenius Group.