Sartorius Stedim Biotech, a leading provider of cutting-edge equipment and services for the development, quality assurance and production processes of the biopharmaceutical industry, has invested Euro 5 million to set up an integrated campus at Neelamangala in the outskirts of Bangalore. The facility now houses the research wing and manufacturing plant.
"The new campus will allow seamless flow of operations, increased capacity and improved efficiencies," Amit Sharma, general manager, sales and services biotechnology division, Sartorius Stedim Biotech, told Pharmabiz.
The Indian arm of Sartorius has developed itself in to a centre of excellence in design, engineering and production in Asia for its parent company Sartorius AG which is a Germany-based leading laboratory and process technology provider covering the segments of biotechnology and mechatronics.
The manufacturing facility in India is among the four facilities worldwide, besides US, Germany and Italy. The research and development (R&D) lab in India is the first R&D operation outside Germany and is already functional at the new campus. The R&D lab handles routine development work for the parent company, apart from involving itself into process development partnerships with customers in the field of bio-pharma processes.
Also, the company will impart training to its customers on various Sartorius products and technologies. The mechatronics R&D has already been operational for more than four years and has been making significant contributions in many R&D initiatives of the company on a global basis.
"The Indian plant is fully integrated into the parent company because of the core engineering competence in design, production, installation, commissioning, automation, integration, validation of fermentor and peripheral systems. It has ramped up its quality systems and brought in significant investments and changes in production systems. This has led to increased exports and helped the domestic business to register over 30 per cent annual growth," apprised Sharma.
Sartorius Stedim Biotech India exports engineered systems to Asian countries like Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia etc. It also exports products back to the group in Germany.
The company's major areas of activity in the biotechnology include fermentation, filtration, purification, fluid management and laboratory applications. The company has steadily moved forward towards its commitment of being a total solution provider in biopharmaceutical processes and has successfully added products in the area of disposables and bioreactors through the recent acquisitions by its parent company, including Stedim Biotech, a leader in disposable fluid handling and Wave Biotech in Switzerland with whom it earlier held a strategic alliance to jointly develop disposable bioreactors. The new products of disposables and fermentor are the fastest growing segments.
The disposable segment is a nascent market in India. However, there is a growing demand with companies like Serum Institute, Reliance Life Sciences, Shantha and Biocon making efforts to replace old technology with newer and advanced solutions. Currently, Sartorius is No.2 in process filtration and a leader in fluid management sector. It is also a leader in fermentor, disposables, cross flow and downstream technologies. The company remains the leader in weighing systems and process automation.
According to Sharma, the impact of the slowdown in the markets of US and Europe has had a cascading effect on India, especially because all its customers have significant exports to these markets.
"The slowdown in production at some key customers has slowed the growth of consumables business. The capital investments were hit in the latter part of 2008 when the companies in the pharma-biotech space started to re-evaluate their plans and project initiatives. This situation has now eased as almost all new projects are targeting long term growth and have assured their plans through careful re-assessment. The capital investment is now set to see an increase in 2009," he said.
A visible trend in the laboratory and pharma-biotech production plant segment is the demand for single-use technologies. This is where disposable products are bound to grow along with cell culture and bioreactors, noted Sharma.