The lab chemicals and analytical instrument industries have been witnessing strong growth with leading players raking in the moolah. Increasing innovation is a major driver for the continued growth of these segments, aver experts.
There have been major investments in these sectors particularly in areas of acquiring products and entering new markets. Life science has been the biggest market segment for both the global and domestic lab chemicals and analytical instrument industry with almost 50 per cent of the overall players already working in this segment at present.
Analytical instruments are being designed as hand held gadgets making it easy for scores of users in the chemical and biotechnology laboratories in the industrial, research and scientific sectors. The new designs of instruments are small but powerful making operations in laboratory faster, simpler and accurate, according to experts.
An emerging trend in the analytical instrumentation space is the development of robots, biochips and rapid testing instruments which are driving the market, according to Waters India, Merck Millipore and Sartorius India.
Therefore instrumentation majors across the globe are now gearing up to design advanced and handy equipment which are getting popular in markets like India. A growing requirement from genetic research, medicine, pharma, food and environment has made the analytical researchers come out with simple, powerful and hand held versions of instruments which are easy to carry and operate, opine industry experts.
There is a growing requirement for faster tests and instant reports in the medical, biotech and pharma sector. Accuracy in analysis is focused towards quality assurance, material testing and nanotechnology. Some of the important analytical instruments are the Raman Spectroscopy applications by Perkin Elmer, Chromotographic Networking by Dionex, GC-MS and LC-MS Technologies by Waters and Ultra Fast Liquid Chromatography by Shimadzu.
The bigwigs in the global analytical instrument space are GE Analytical Instruments, Agilent Technologies, Waters Corporation, Merck Millipore Inc, Sartorius, Varian, Sigma Aldrich, Dion EX, YMC, GmbH, Restsch, Eppendorf, Thermo Electron Corporation, Bruker Corporation, Perkin Elmer, Netzsch, Shimadzu, Merck, Mettler, Danaher and Toledo.
In the case of lab chemicals, the Indian market is valued at Rs. 1,000 crore and is growing between 12-18 per cent annually. The sector which saw a major fall in business between 2008-09 is now exhibiting modest growth in volume. Prior to 2008, the sector was expanding at a fast pace clocking a growth rate anywhere between 18 and 20 per cent which decelerated because of the global economic meltdown.
"Unlike the sluggish scene between 2009-10, we are witnessing a modest recovery and are expecting robust growth in the Indian lab chemicals space", said S R Sudhakar, Director - Sales & Marketing, Leonid Chemicals Pvt. Ltd.
There is also an increased presence of multinational companies. There has been a consolidation in the industry and acquisitions, he added.
Leading lab chemical companies include Thermo Fischer, Merck Specialties and Rankem, a leading manufacturer & supplier of premium quality laboratory reagents, which was acquired by Avantor Performance Materials, earlier known as Mallinckrodt Baker, manufactures and markets high-performance chemistries and materials around the world under two well known brand names, JT Baker and Mallinckrodt Chemicals widely used in biotechnology and pharmaceutical production.
More over, the Indian market has a large presence of multinational companies like Thermo Fischer, Merck Specialties and Rankem.
There are around 30 companies in the domestic market including Mumbai-based SD Fine Chem in Mumbai and Spectro Chem. Leonid is the only local company in Karnataka in the lab chemicals space and is a key supplier to Dr. Reddys, Shasun Chemicals and Micro Labs to name a few. In addition, Karnataka is also home to Sigma Aldrich India which is a US-based globally renowned lab chemical manufacturer that was acquired by Merck Millipore in September 2014.
Now India is being most-sought after for its knowledge base. The country has an inherent strength in chemistry. The talent pool which is highly qualified is recognized for dossier presentation capability. This is why the regulated markets of Europe and the US are looking for lab chemicals. Further, the growth of the contract research and manufacturing services(CRAMS) and clinical research organizations will propel the growth of the sector, said Sudhakar.
At the same time according to a report, the global market for laboratory chemical reagents is likely to witness significant growth due to increased usage of chemical reagents in the large scale commercial applications and basic research activities. Additionally, continuous technological advancements in the field of bio-therapeutics, recombinant DNA and cell culture have enhanced the scientific ability to identify and produce human therapeutics for ages. Hence, this has also contributed to the robust growth of the market.
The global market for laboratory chemical reagents can be segmented on the basis of products segments and end users. The product segments category can be subdivided into molecular biology (gene expression, gene synthesis, vectors, monoclonal & polycolonal antibodies, extraction kits, enzymes, cloning & sequencing, PCR reagents, and others), cytokine and chemokine testing, carbohydrate analysis, immunochemistry, cell/tissue culture, environmental testing (pesticide residue & others) and biochemistry.
Of these microbiology analysis currently holds the largest share of the market whereas, cytokine and chemokine testing is expected to emerge as the fastest growing segment in near future. Biotechnology, academic segment, non-academic segment and corporate segment, are some of the end users of laboratory chemical reagents.
The field of molecular biology witnessed a plethora of new opportunities with the conclusion of human genome project which has expanded the usage of polymerase chain reaction(PCR). At present, PCR technologies are being used in a wide range of applications such as paternity testing, forensic finger printing, gene expression and DNA sequencing. The market for PCR is growing on account of rising awareness and increased acceptance of real-time PCR. The reagents used in real time PCR offer instant and quality results as compared to conventional PCR which is consequently expected to increase the sales of PCR reagents.
Furthermore, the market for laboratory chemical reagents would be fuelled by increasing launch of monoclonal antibody therapeutics products and growth in cell culture manufacturing. Monoclonal antibodies are being used for effective treatment for inflammatory disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer treatment. Physicians are turning towards prescription of monoclonal antibodies due to effectiveness of the antibiotics. Hence, increasing demand of monoclonal antibodies would also benefit the market for laboratory chemical reagents.
BD Biosciences, bioMrieux, Beckman Coulter Inc., CALTAG Laboratories, GE Healthcare, EMD Chemicals Inc., Life Technologies Corporation, Meridian Life Science Inc., Lonza Biologics Ltd., PerkinElmer Inc., QIAGEN, Promega Corporation, Sigma-Aldrich Corp., Shimadzu Biotech, Takara Bio Inc., Wako Pure Chemical Industries and others are some of the major players operating in laboratory chemical reagents market.
Clinical chemistry analyzers are the most widely used equipment in clinical laboratories. A large quantity of reagents and other consumables are required for various types of tests. Basic metabolic panel tests are the largest test segment for the clinical chemistry analyzer market in 2014, whereas the lipid profile test segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2014 and 2019.
The global clinical chemistry analyzers market was estimated at $8,965 million in 2014. This market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.52 per cent between 2014 and 2019, to reach $11,728.01 million in 2019.
India is an interesting market because of increasing contract research and clinical trial projects, besides high level of scientific manpower availability. Despite being a knowledge-driven industry, the analytical instrumentation market is still hardly visible, according to the analytical instrument manufacturers.
In 2013-14, the market for analytical instrumentation in India is valued to be around US$ 1 billion and the reality is that less than six per cent of the requirement is met by domestic manufacturing.
The Indian market has been growing consistently and there is more scope for business development. The increasing pharma-biotech manufacturing activities, drug research and development, growing contract manufacturing and research services makes India an important destination for sales of analytical instruments, said KV Venugopalan, President Waters India and former President, Indian Analytical Industry Association .
The leading analytical instrumentation companies in the country located at Bengaluru are the Millipore India, Sartorius India and Waters India and Pall Corporation.
Merck Millipore India will now provide the much-needed competitive strength in the lab solutions space for India and South East Asian markets with its focus on upstream processing, downstream processing and process monitoring tools.
The biggest challenge for Sartorius India is the cell culture and fermentation requirements it needs to deliver for both India and its customers in the Asia Pacific region. In this connection, the company has gone in for major infrastructure expansion including its SAP implementation network project and an application lab for cell culture and down stream purification technologies in the present premises at the Peenya Industrial Area at Bangalore, according to Amit Chatterjee, managing director, Sartorius India.
Waters with its Acquity UltraPerformance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC) has pioneered a new category of chromatographic tests.
Pall Corporation has opened its new Center of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru in 2006 in an effort to increase its presence in the Asian region. The centre provides India's pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and discovery marketplace with a full range of total fluid management solutions. It includes a state-of-the-art process proteomics lab designed specifically to help customers speed the discovery process, a training facility and a validation laboratory to meet the growing need for support as Indian companies enter the highly regulated drug export market.
The growth of the life sciences market and increasing levels of investments from the venture capitalists in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, an increase in the government spending on research and development and other factors are all encouraging suppliers to look at India as a destination to make their presence felt. Leading players like Shimadzu, VWR International and Agilent Technologies have now opened customer support and development centres to meet the requirements of the local customers directly.
Shimadzu Analytical (India) Pvt Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Shimadzu Corporation, Japan has opened its customer support centre equipped with state-of-the-art instruments. Shimadzu has been marketing its products in India through its distributors Toshvin Analytical, Amkette Analytics, Swan Environmental, and Spinco Biotech for more than 35 years.
For the development of the Indian analytical instrument market, the Union government needs to create technology parks, like IT/ITES parks, with tax and duty benefits which will go a long way in supporting industry efforts in attaining self-reliance in this critical component of our scientific and economic growth.
“We hope the government will consider our recommendations which will help bolster the industry which is seen a fulcrum of the bio-pharmaceutical sector, said Venugopalan.