As of: 03/08/2022 3:06 p.m
In 2021, Germany bought 3.8 billion FFP2 masks and comparable protective masks abroad. The majority came from China. 669 million masks from German production were exported.
Even in the second year of the corona pandemic, Germany bought billions of protective masks abroad despite building up its own production capacities. According to the Federal Statistical Office, a total of 3.8 billion filtering half masks such as FFP2 masks were imported in 2021. That was an average of 46 masks per inhabitant.
Most of the masks come from China
The total value of the protective masks introduced was 841.3 million euros. When imported, the average price per piece was 22 cents. The most important supplier country was China. From there alone, 3.2 billion masks with a total value of 691 million euros came to Germany. This was followed by imports from Great Britain (173 million masks worth 56 million euros) and imports from Turkey (159 million masks for 24 million euros).
However, Germany also exported protective masks: 669 million protective masks from German production with a total value of 285 million euros were delivered abroad, a third of them to Austria and Poland.
2020 Masks worth billions imported
There are no direct comparative figures for the first pandemic year, 2020, because protective masks have only been recorded separately in trade statistics since January 2021. For 2020, however, the Federal Statistical Office had put the value of imported protective masks at around six billion euros – 3.5 billion euros of this related to imports in April and May 2020 alone, i.e. the months at the beginning of the pandemic. Even then, China was by far the most important country of origin.