Headquartered in East Hills, New York, Pall Corporation is the global leader in the fieldof filtration, separations and purification. Organised around two broad markets- LifeSciences and Industrial - the company provides leading-edge products to customers in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, transfusion medicine,semiconductor, and water purification, aerospace and broad industrial markets. Pall's registered total revenues for fiscal 2005 were $1.9 billion.
Holly Haughney is vice-president, Pall BioPharmaceuticals Marketing, Asia. Dr Haughney has been relocated to Bangalore, recently. In her new role, she manages the BioPharmaceuticals marketing teams throughout Asia, including China, India, Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan.
Hazelle Lam is regional marketing manager, Pall BioPharmaceuticals, Southeast Asia.
She is looking after strategic marketing activities for Pall BioPharmaceuticals' filtration and separation products in the Southeast Asia region, primarily in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Holly Haughney and Hazelle Lam detail on the increasing importance of Asia and Pall Corporation's strategies for the region in an e-mail interview. Excerpts:
How does Pall Corporation look at Asian region as a whole in terms of its business activities? Which are the focus markets in the Asian region?
Market growth in the Asian pharmaceutical industry has prompted Pall to intensify its focus in this region. Our BioPharm business in Asia grew by 14 percent over the last fiscal year largely because of the solid foundation of expertise and technological capabilities we have built throughout the region. We continue to look for ways to bring our industry-leading filtration, separation and purification products closer to customers and these newest initiatives reinforce this commitment as well as our dedication to future growth in Asia.
Pall's focus markets in Asia are India, China and South East.
We are opening a new Center of Excellence in Bangalore, India this year. The versatile centre will provide India's pharmaceutical, biotechnology and discovery marketplace with a full range of total fluid management solutions. It will include a state-of-the-art process proteomics lab designed specifically to help customers speed the discovery process. It will also include a training facility and a validation laboratory to meet the growing need for support as Indian-based companies enter the highly-regulated drug export market.
We also plan to build a Center of Excellence in Shanghai, China to enlarge Pall's role in advancing the Chinese marketplace. By broadening our offerings and capabilities throughout China, we can work even more closely with local customers to help them optimize operations and expedite process validation. This also enables us to better help them participate in the transition to disposable processing. Additionally, Pall is emphasizing both internal and customer training throughout China. Our Storm programme, for instance, offers technical seminars in all key biopharmaceutical production locations in China on a variety of topics ranging from sterilizing filtration to enhancing API production.
In Southeast Asia, we have set up a technical centre and lab in Singapore that offers solutions on systems engineering as well as a wide range of services for qualification, optimization and validation. We have plans to build a Centre of Excellence in Singapore in the future to address life science activities for all of Southeast Asia.
Where does India fit into Pall Corporation's scheme of operations?
The pharmaceutical markets in India present a tremendous opportunity for our customers. Many multinational manufacturers and processors have moved quickly to gain a presence in this region and domestic companies also are beginning to make an impact in the global marketplace.
Pall is establishing a new Center of Excellence in Bangalore, India to address the diversified biopharmaceutical needs of the region, which includes APIs, vaccines, biotech drugs, parenterals and plasma products.
To facilitate better direct interaction with Indian customers, we have made significant investments in staffing our Indian operations. The company has relocated key personnel from Pall global headquarters in New York to Bangalore.
Pall Life Sciences India is currently in the process of setting up a proteomics centre in Bangalore. What went behind choosing Bangalore as venue? How'd the proposed centre help leverage Pall's India strategies?
Bangalore is fast acquiring the status of a global technology hub. Being a prime location for many discovery labs, there is an enormous talent pool of local scientists. The city's central (south) allows us to reach our customers effectively.
The Centre of Excellence in Bangalore is the first of its kind and will provide biopharmaceutical companies with Process Proteomics, validation, training, and process troubleshooting /consultancy. This new facility will serve India and ultimately companies throughout Asia and globally. The proteomics services will help scientists working in discovery by providing an extremely fast means of identifying contaminants and purifying complex biological mixtures containing almost any target molecule. For example, the Pall BioSepra range of sorbents and the Ciphergen chip-array technology can be used to determine the optimal conditions for biomolecules of interest thereby significantly reducing the timecycles for development.
Our services help biopharmaceutical developers and manufacturers to get their products to the market more efficiently. By enhancing ease of use, reducing the total cost of ownership and becoming their partners rather than merely suppliers, Pall helps manufacturers optimize their production processes to attain the highest ROI. For example, our validation services help to ensure that regulatory requirements are met whether the product is used for the domestic or export market, and our training programmes are vital for Indian producers as new unit operations are implemented in process.
On purification and separation technology front, what are the most recent innovations/trends sweeping the industry world over?
Among the innovations that we see, the use of disposable processing technologies is one of the most important. This is a phenomenon that we see all over the world, but it has particular significance in a high-growth region like Asia. As countries in Asia rapidly expand their biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, innovations in the use of disposables will help speed the time to market of new therapies.
Disposables provide manufacturers with pre-assembled and pre-sterilized systems, resulting in considerable time savings since they reduce huge start-up costs, as well as eliminate cleaning and validation. As the number of patient-specific therapies increases and vaccine production grows in Asia and elsewhere, disposable systems also eliminate cross contamination concerns.