export - I am having trouble with article formatting when exportingimporting articles from the production to the development env

Whenever I export a couple of articles from my production site to my development site, the imported one loses all its spacings (&nbsp elements). Has anyone ever encountered this?

I use Wordpress Importer; also tried different export/import plugins and they have the same effect.

2. also have trouble with the featured image not being exported for the said articles and it is not being shown.

To be more precise:

The export structure looks like this:

<span style="font-weight: 400;">block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text   </span>

&nbsp;

<span style="font-weight: 400;"> block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text    </span>

&nbsp;

After the import is complete, the structure looks like this:

<span style="font-weight: 400;"> block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text    </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;"> block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text  block of text    </span>