Amsterdam, 26th March 2018: bioLIVE – the UBM bioprocessing and manufacturing event opening in October (9-11) in Madrid – announces that it is to build on the success of last year’s global small molecule country rankings by introducing a biologics manufacturing and processing league table. The results of which will rank the perception of the world’s largest biologics markets for ‘overall quality’, ‘growth potential’ [for exports and domestic market], ‘innovation’ and ‘ability to meet future capacity constraints’.

“Biologics capacity is growing quickly and will increase by nearly 40% over the next four years. Asia and European countries are building more facilities, which is reducing the USA’s overall market share of capacity. What no one has yet evaluated is the relative perceived strengths of each region. The perception of each country will undoubtedly be a factor in realizing its growth potential,” added Rutger Oudejans, Brand Director at UBM for bioLIVE.

The study will evaluate the consequences for the supply chain, as with an increasing number of bio facilities globally, the perception of the ability to meet future demand could well be a decisive factor in major investment decisions. What will also become clearer is which markets are seen to have the best potential growth both domestically and for exports.

Last year’s small molecule ranking demonstrated that the traditional economies of the USA, Germany and Japan were still perceived as the strongest, but with the rapid emergence of newer bio regions – we could see countries like Korea, China and Singapore ranking much higher for large molecule manufacturing. Additionally, the research will also evaluate what the potentially geopolitical and supply chain risk is in newer regions, as well as the knowledge of bio professionals. Thus, we might see a picture emerging of certain countries being seen as exceptional for capacity and production, and others for knowledge and innovation.

One of key considerations behind launching bioLIVE was the potential benefits of integration of the small and large molecule industries. But also, with an increasingly globalized supply chain, it’s important that the industry can centralize and share learning. For example, information on which countries are the leaders in the associated types of services needed to help meet changing commercial requirements and bring bio products to market. These include activities as diverse as recruitment services to regulatory submission support, cell line development (e.g. CHO, mouse myeloma and human cell lines), analytical testing and custom assays.

A central feature of bioLIVE will be access to the best available bio content, and later this year, the company will also add a new biologics section to its annual expert report. Global bio industry experts such as Eric Langer are being called upon to forecast the industry’s’ direction over the next few years.

“One of the great successes of the small molecules space has been the internationalization of the supply chain, and we want to bring this experience and couple it with industry analysis from prominent experts, and new original research, so that we can better inform the bio community on the opportunities available. To sustain the next wave of growth, the industry will need to meet new partners, but also, access insights and content to know how best to work with new customers. With this in mind, bioLIVE will be a mixture of biotechs, big pharma and service providers, coupled with an extensive learning programme for bio processing and manufacturing professionals,” added Oudejans.