With more than 600 companies involved in biotech activities, Germany is one of the leading countries for biotech in Europe. Approximately 350 of these companies are considered core biotech companies. They represent roughly 19 per cent of European core biotechs.

In 2004, these 350 companies achieved combined sales of more than €1 billion which represents roughly 10 per cent of European biotech sales. German investments in R&D were €860 million – 14 per cent of European biotech R&D spending.

More than 80 per cent of all German biotechs are small and medium enterprises and have 50 or fewer employees. Only seven per cent employ more than 100 people. All in all, more than one-third of the European biotech employees are working in Germany (11,500 people).

Most German biotechs are organised in one of the 25 biotech clusters (BioRegios) with the highest biotech concentration in the state of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Nordrhein-Westfalen, and Berlin/Brandenburg.

Key activities of German biotech firms are in the fields of therapeutics, platform technologies, diagnostics, bioinformatics and proteomics. Therapeutics research is heavily dominated by oncology, followed by infectious diseases and cardiovascular.

Funding of biotech companies remains strong – in fact, 40 per cent of all European biotech venture capital is invested in Germany.

Germany ranks second after the US in terms of patents for pharmaceuticals that have a biotech link.

Biotech is rapidly gaining momentum in Germany – in fact, experts believe that 30 per cent of the economy will somehow depend on biotech by 2015.

Leading companies in Germany and Switzerland include:

• Boehringer Ingelheim
• Bayer Healthcare
• Merck KGaA
• Merz
• Novartis
• Roche
• Sanofi-Aventis

Opportunities

Opportunities for Australian exporters exist in the following areas:

• German companies conducting clinical trials (especially within oncology).
• Import of marine and plant organisms for pharmaceutical manufacturing.
• Licensing agreements between German pharma and biotech companies/research institutions.
• Research collaborations/strategic alliances between biotech companies (focus on Australian cutting-edge areas such as genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics).