Manuel Zafra: “The drug creates value beyond the patient’s health”

Merck’s factory in Mollet del Vallès has become one of the German pharmaceutical group’s strategic production centers. The plant makes medicines for diabetes and cardiometabolic diseases, producing around 3 billion doses a year for export to 17 countries.

The Catalan site also includes a chemical plant that produces active pharmaceutical ingredients. Nearly 600 of Merck’s 1,200 employees in Spain work at the facilities. Manuel Zafra, who has led the company’s Spanish market since 2022, said the factory is ready to take on new products and challenges.

Merck has invested more than €40 million in the site over the past four years. The spending has supported digitalization, modernization and measures to improve sustainability. Zafra said investment must continue because pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities are complex, heavily regulated and require constant technological upgrades.

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The drug creates value beyond the patient’s health.

He attributed the plant’s role partly to Catalonia’s pharmaceutical and biotechnology ecosystem. The region has 79 human-medicine factories, as well as innovation centers and researchers in Barcelona. Zafra said the area’s industrial base and research network have helped give it global importance.

The executive also urged Europe to strengthen its strategic autonomy in essential medicines after the lessons of the pandemic. He said the European Union must recognize the value of medicines for both public health and the economy, while reducing bureaucracy and overregulation. The bloc’s 27-country decision-making structure, he argued, leaves it less agile than competitors such as China and the United States.

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Dialogue with China remains necessary. But it must produce results.