The German Biotechnology Sector 2016
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- The German Biotechnology Sector 2016
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.
Development in the service sector and bioeconomy
Apart from the health sector, the second largest pillar of the German biotech scene is companies (186) that are not active in a specific field. This includes all companies providing services exclusively or primarily for other biotech firms, or which function as suppliers.
In 2015, all these companies together had a turnover of €690m (+2%) and an R&D budget of €109m (+1.9%), demonstrating that the service business model has proven to be a guarantee for continuous growth within the German biotech sector since 2011 when turnover was €556m.
More turnover in bioeconomy
There are 60 companies developing industrial applications in various other sectors (see fig. 5) which demonstrates the relevance of biotech processes throughout the industry as a whole. This is also underlined by a rise of 14.3% in industrial biotechnology turnover. The application of biotechnology in the plant breeding and agricultural sector has decreased over the years, but in 2015 the 19 companies generated an increase of 5.8% in turnover (€32.3m). Thus, the growing interest in sustainable, biobased processes and products therefore acts as a slight boost for the industrial and agricultural biotech business in Germany.
