Liviu Ungureanu, PlantExtrakt, takes the stage at Innovate Health 2024

Liviu Ungureanu, Managing Director at PlantExtrakt, will join as a speaker at the Innovate Health Forum 2024. This event is scheduled for May 22, at the Courtyard by Marriott Bucharest Floreasca. The forum aims to explore cutting-edge developments in healthcare, medical technology, and pharmaceutical industries, providing a unique platform for leaders and innovators to discuss the future of health.

How has the OTC/homeopathic market evolved since 2020, during which it went through various crises?

PlantExtrakt is a player in the Consumer Healthcare (CHC) market, which includes dietary supplements as well as medical devices and OTC (over-the-counter) drugs.

In 2020 – the year of the Covid 19 pandemic, the CHC market grew compared to the previous year by +9.7% in units and +15% in value, up to 1.202 million Euros – in the foreground being the products with vitamins and those for immunity, but also pain relievers and cold products.

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The post-pandemic period brought a weighting and then a slight decrease in the evolution in market units, against the background of the decrease in consumer concern regarding the Covid 19 disease, but also under the influence of the increasingly pronounced decrease in average purchasing power, caused by inflation. Thus, according to the market research published by IQVia, the evolution in units from one year to another was -0.9% in 2021, +10.2% in 2022, and -1.1% in 2023.

CHC Market = Consumer Healthcare Products

2021: 1,318 million Euros, – 0.9% in units; + 9.6% in value

2022: 1,633 million Euros, + 10.2% in units; + 21.6% in value

2023: 1,832 million Euros, – 1.1% in units; +11.7% in value

In the last year, against this quantitatively negative background of the consumer healthcare products market (CHC = Consumer Healthcare Products = -1.1% Y 2023 vs Y 2022), PlantExtrakt, as a producer of natural therapies, managed to grow. The same growth trend is observed in the case of other natural food supplement companies, so we could conclude that there is a consumer orientation towards natural health care products.

How has the OTC/homeopathic market generally evolved over the last 10-20 years? Has consumer attitude towards these products changed in any way?

In the last 10-20 years, Romania is recovering trends that were already manifested in the countries of Western Europe. Such as the propensity to consume nutritional  supplements to maintain health, concern for daily well-being, and turning to natural therapies for health care. An intriguing fact related to this aspect is the tradition of our country related to the use of medicinal plants, a tradition that was for a time rejected, as if it were something bad. However, we are happy to note that the younger generations are starting to reintegrate natural products into their daily routine.

As for the use of homeopathic medicines, in our country they penetrated especially after the revolution. Professor Dobrescu, from the Bucharest Faculty of Pharmacy, was one of our pioneers, who contributed to the cultivation of this science. Now we have two or three medical societies in the country, dealing with homeopathy and there is a formal structure for the training of specialists in this field, so we can say that here too we are recovering trends present in the rest of Europe.

What are the biggest challenges facing the OTC/homeopathic industry today?

Although we are witnessing an improvement in the health education of Romanian consumers, who would like to access health care products more often, the decrease in average purchasing power makes choices difficult. The financial blockages in the pharmaceutical market, caused by the delays in payment to pharmacies, from the National Health Insurance House, also contribute to diminishing the power of distributors and pharmacies to make available a wide range of consumer health care products. From here, the manufacturers of therapies also suffer.

Another challenge is the low barrier to market entry of low-quality dietary supplements. Thus, manufacturers who comply with high manufacturing standards and who have higher production costs, are faced with unfair competition from intensively promoted products, but with modest features.

How do you think the market will evolve in the coming years?

We are optimistic about the strengthening position of natural therapies in the broad landscape of medical products. And we hope for an economic revival that allows consumers to invest in their health day by day, both through the use of natural therapies and through sports, diet and periodic medical check-ups.