The sector statistics in facts & figures

More revenue, more jobs, more financing, more R&D expenditure – all the signs are pointing towards a sustainable growth. In addition, German companies are increasingly attracing the interest of international capital.

The German biotech companies can look back on a favourable year. According to the company survey, which BIOCOM AG has now conducted annually via the information platform biotechnologie.de for more than ten years, the turnover of the German biotech sector again exceeded €3bn. Total figures increased by 8.3% to €3.28bn.

R&D expenditure above one billion

Another upswing has been observed regarding spending on research and development (R&D). For the first time since 2010, the innovation budget cracked the one billion euros mark (+8.8%) and now stands at €1.04bn (2014: €953m). Financial investments mirrored the growth trend in 2015: around €550m was invested in German biotech companies. Compared to €401m in the year before, this is a significant increase of 37%. A large proportion of the money (€260m) went into the private biotech sector, but the public companies also gained significant interest from investors in 2015, raising a total of €245m.

More employees than ever

With a total of 19,010 (2014: 17,930), there were more employees than ever before working in biotech companies that are occupied wholly or predominantly with modern biotechnological methods. The total number of these companies rose slightly to 593 (2014: 579). Thereby, the following figures and conclusions relate only to the ‘dedicated’ biotechnology companies, as defined by the OECD (see for methods).

Biotech as an industrial topic

There is sustained interest in biotechnological processes and services from big business. This is confirmed by a consistently high number of companies in which biotechnology represents only one aspect of business. In 2015, the category of ‘other biotechnology-active companies’ comprised a total of 133 companies (2014: 131). These included both pharmaceutical and chemical companies focused on innovative biotechnological processes as well as companies from the areas of environment, waste management, energy and agriculture. In 2015, a total of 20,250 people were employed in the biotechnology-oriented areas of such companies. Compared to the previous year (2014: 19,200), this represents a growth of 5.5%. Overall, there was an increase in total headcount in commercial biotechnology to 39,260 (2014: 37,130) (+5,7%).