The market for digestive drugs continues to grow in value terms, despite a slight decrease in physical sales. In the first four months of 2025, Russians purchased more than 26.2 million packages of there drugs worth over 7 billion rubles. The sales increased by 18.3% in monetary terms and 3.5% in physical terms year-on-year. The drugs that showed the highest sales growth in January-April in the Russian retail market were those supplied by Russian and Indian manufacturers, according to the RNC Pharma analytical company.
Almost all drugs from the top 10 showed significant growth in ruble terms. The largest jump was demonstrated by Indian Unienzyme (Unichem company). Its sales tripled both in monetary terms and in packages. Russian Micrasim (ABBA Rus) sales went up 60.8% in rubles and 29.5% in physical terms. German Ermнtal (Nordix Pharma) saw a 77% drop in both monetary terms and in packages.
Drugs with INN pancreatin accounted for more than 82% of sales in physical terms for the period (the remaining part were combined drugs) . Retail sales featured 16 brands from 21 manufacturers(a total of 85 SKUs in the group). Creon (Abbott, US) accounted for the biggest spending in the market, with a share of 32.5%, followed by the French Festal (Sanofi) with 18.9%. Together, these two brands accounted for more than half of all sales in value terms.
Unbranded Pancreatin, is produced by 10 Russian manufacturers, had the highest sales in physical units, It accounted for 43.5% of all packages sold. with the third place in monetary terms (18.5% share).
Analysts added that in 2024, retail sales of enzyme drugs amounted to 74.8 million packages worth 18.3 billion rubles. In physical terms, sales decreased by 2% compared to 2023, while in ruble terms, on the contrary, an increase of 12.4% was recorded.
Demand for enzyme drugs shows the surge in retail in connection with Russia’s traditional holidays. Sales peak in December before the seasonal holidays: in December 2024, almost 7.5 million packages worth more than 1.9 billion rubles were sold. Demand surges are also observed in March and May.
Earlier, the Healthy Dialogue Association analyzed the index of trust in medicines sold in Russian pharmacies based on data from social networks, and the resulting Top 10 included two drugs for improving digestion.
