Bio-clusters personify the suitable way to made inroads to an economic model for the future and constitute the engines that stimulate the Biotechnological sector.
It owes to these companies associations or bio-clusters dedicate high percentages of investment to R&D, they offer high qualification labor positions, enjoy a very specialized demand and focus towards the global market.
The proof of its success lies in the fact that the Biotech sector is one of the unique sectors that has been kept in growth during the crisis, and that continues growing nowadays.
The base of its functioning is in that the industry based on the Bio Sciences is characterized by its narrow relation between research, innovation and competitiveness, and depends to a great extent on the appearance of new types of companies that take as an aim the exploitation of advanced technologies which purpose is to answer to the myriad of present needs in the different industrial spheres.
The emergence, growth and ripeness of these companies needs of powerful tools that guarantee their stability and progress in different foreheads. Some o them are:
- The access to helps and financing sources
- The allies search
- The introduction in networks
- The availability of internationalization tools
- The coverage by media
- The fiscal and judicial advising
- The support from institutional representatives
All this arranges in order to manage the positioning of the three fundamental Biotech´s cornerstones: «products, financing and team», like are defined by Luis Mora, MD of the Business unit of Oncology in PharmaMar.
Let´s stop a moment to see the progression of this great company. PharmaMar is the major Spanish´s biotech company, the first company in the world in developing and commercializing an antitumoral drug with marine origin, and that presents the stock exchange capital that ascends to 600M € only in the Madrid´s Stock exchange. From 2012 it has expanded its presence worldwide, creating subsidiaries in European countries as France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Belgium and Austria and in The United States (New York). Its line of marine`s antitumoral Yondelis ® has its commercialization approved for the European Commission and the FDA of USA and Japan, and represents its major assets in sales from its market introduction in 2007.
In order to that companies of this relevancy and startups of recent creation manage to develop their potential, they hold nowadays with the impulse that are capable of exercising different types of companies associations, the named Bio-clusters.
Spain possesses 11 Bio-clusters (discover them here), which cover autonomous communities, and a great biocompanies association, ASEBIO, which includes the whole Spanish territory, being in addition the organizing one of the major event of the biotechnology worldwide organized by a national bioindustrial, BIOSPAIN, which they attend more than 800 companies and generates more than 3.000 meetings one-to-one.
Let’s pass now to discover how is the functioning of the Bioclusters, so it suits to define their structure by a map of their main stakeholders. We are going to use the maps of the Biomedical, Agri-food and Industrial sectors of BioBasque, the Basque´s Country biocluster.
- Every biocluster relies on institutions capable of providing and developing scientific and technological solutions as they are the technological centers, Research Centers (CICs), research networks and Universities.
- Promoters belonging to the public administration, government agencies and intermediary bodies of innovation, which are those who believe, coordinate and manage every biocluster supplying them the tools and services required.
- Support Instruments like Incubators, technological parks and support units, within them biotechs find a way to begin and to develop their first stages.
Financing sources of risk capital and seed capital.
Suppliers of the biotech`s main needs, like: programs of software and management tools, analysis services, reagents, set of instruments and machinery, engineering and facilities. - The sector`s core is constituted by the biotechs, whichs can develop products and services in prevention, diagnostics or treatment, according to devote themselves to the Biomedical sector, primary production, transformation, accused and food preservation, food safety and animal health, in the Agri-food sector, and improvement of the industrial processes, production of biofuels and industrial and environmental sustainability in the Industrial sector.
- The clients, in case of the biomedical sector are the System of Public Health, the Private Social Healthcare sercices, the Pharmaceutical Industry and the laboratories. From the Agri-food sector clients stand out in the foresty, cattle and agrarian sector, the food processing industry, the channels of distribution, the supermarkets and the veterinary industry. From the industrial sector they are relevant the textile industry, paper industry, energy industry, plastic industry and the rest of industries.
Other related services are management consultancy, fiscal and legal services and financial services.
All of them form an interrelationships map that allow the development of the business models and the company strategy of every biotech.
Thanks to the hard work done by the companies and to their introduction in the bioclusters networks, the Spanish Biotechnology has managed to grow and reach great milestones, comparing its dimensions and its production and innovation capacity to that of other European countries that were leading the sector. Among his achievements we can emphasize the creation of:
Some other interesting details:
ASEBIO also is an organizer of the main event of the biotechnology in Latin America, BIOLATAM, with an assistance of more than 300 biotechs and that generates more than 700 meetings One-to-one.
The importance of the biotechnological fairs resides in their aptitude to multiply the generation of commercial agreements between companies, introduction in networks and creation of alliances of co-development and co-marketing.