Millipore Corporation has firmed up plans to go in for acquisition of medium-sized life sciences service companies in the country to further consolidate its presence here. The decision comes in after it acquired the remaining 60 per cent ownership of its joint venture Millipore India Pvt Ltd. The US life science service leader intends to capitalize on the talent and market potential in the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) and Singapore.

India represents a critical part of Millipore strategy. The country’s estimated 80 US FDA approved plants manufacturing 25 per cent of the generic drugs is a promising market for its range products that span from filtration, lab water, drug discovery to upstream-down stream bio process and monitoring. “This is where we intend to grow our presence with infrastructure expansion, new products and augment engineering-design teams,” Geoffrey Ide, corporate vice president, international, Millipore Corporation told Pharmabiz.

The country’s has a promising biotech industry with expertise in manufacture of biosimilars. The key growth areas identified for future are drug development and clinical research where Millipore can play a pivotal role in supplying the range of technologies and services for the biosciences research and biopharmaceutical manufacture, he added.

The changing market dynamics over the past year demanded that Millipore to explore newer avenues for growth. This is where India and China along with Singapore indicated room for development. “Therefore, we will look at India to increase our global sourcing efforts from its operation at Bangalore in the Peenya Industrial Area. The facility has a Export Oriented Unit which manufactures select filtration and chromatography products for global markets. Its Access Lab and Luminous Lab provide for validation and process development services,” he said.

The Asia-Pacific business contributes 20 per cent of the earnings to its revenues of US$ 6.1 billion of which India share is 10 per cent.

Viewing the competences in engineering-design in India, Millipore is keen to expand its production here and off load its entire manufacturing operations from France.

In addition, the company intends to float a new IT outsourcing division which will be second after its US centre to locally develop the software for its range of products for international markets. The biggest attraction towards India is the accessibility to trained technical human resources, stated the Millipore corporate VP.

In Brazil, the company already has a manufacturing base that caters to needs of bio-pharma generic units. In China, it will expand its sales and service centre to add on a production plant. In Russia, it has a team of 24. Its Singapore manufacturing unit supplies to global customers.

For the future, the focus areas would be Radio Frequency ID products which are indispensable components helping to trace and monitor operations. Millipore is working to have RFID tags on its filtration range.

The biggest challenge in these markets is the retention of good talent, lack of regulatory framework and Intellectual Property issues. These are areas which are slowly improving and evolving in many of the emerging markets, he added.