The German Biotechnology Sector 2015
More revenue, more jobs, more funding – all signs are pointing towards growth in the German biotech sector. These are the central conclusions of the company survey carried out by the information platform biotechnologie.de at the beginning of 2015 on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). In 2014, the turnover exceeded the milestone of 3 billion euros for the very first time. For the first time since 2008, spending on research and development (R&D) has increased once again.
Cooperations
The biotechnological innovations that are gaining traction today in the pharmaceutical, chemical and food sectors are often significantly more sustainable than traditional technologies and processes. This has been recognised by large corporations as well as medium-sized companies. The pressing question of whether, and under which conditions such a transformation is worthwhile, is the focus of joint R&D projects with other companies, research institutions or organisations. In 2014, together with partners from research and industry, the 186 companies recorded in the current survey undertook collaborations in nearly 2,000 separate projects.
Almost one-quarter (513) of all collaborations with research facilities relate to questions of basic research. Likewise, there are numerous ties with industry (647), and even among themselves, the biotechnology companies in the survey managed to notch up a total of 474 partnerships. Thereby, the cooperations are distributed across the entire value chain, with a predictably strong focus on research (890) and development (519). Ranking significantly below are the areas of validation (214) and sales cooperations (414). Almost every second industrial cooperation now extends across national boundaries (48.7 %); in the case of academic partnerships, this is more than one in four (26.7 %).
