Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Another Asian “tiger” to watch: Singapore

Much has been written about China’s potential in life science and pharmaceutical sectors.  This is a positive trend, for sure, but has been hampered by quality control concerns.

Many are looking beyond China to another Asian tiger:  Singapore.

Singapore's economy grew at an annualized rate of 26 percent in the first half of this year, a blistering pace that may moderate for the full year to 15 percent, the top-of-the-range estimate for many economists. Still that should be enough to overtake China as Asia's fastest-growing economy this year.

A long-standing policy to lure pharmaceutical factories to Singapore with tax breaks, special R&D facilities, and worker training has paid off spectacularly.

Pfizer, Sanofi-aventis, Roche, and other pharma leaders have picked Singapore as a key operations base for Asia because they need facilities that can pass rigorous inspections by regulators and produce huge volumes of pharmaceuticals. GlaxoSmithKline has also expanded in Singapore this year.

When I was at an Asia-Pacific managers’ meeting earlier this year, I met with the Singapore sales and marketing team to get their first-hand impression of the upside potential. They are well-positioned to take full advantage of the opportunities this market offers.  And we at Stinson Brand Innovation are pleased to be supporting them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's on example of a strategic move in Singapore designed to harness Asia's potential as a key growth region.

PerkinElmer built its centre of excellence in Ayer Rajah Crescent area of Singapore for a range of areas, from pharmaceutical research and neonatal and prenatal screening to environmental monitoring.

"While biomedical sciences companies are in a race to develop new solutions for unmet clinical and market needs, there is also intense pressure to keep developmental costs competitive. Raising productivity and R&D cost effectiveness have become critical for these companies," it says.

In view of this, PerkinElmer's entry is timely and welcomed by the scientific community in Singapore.
The R&D centre provides a platform for PerkinElmer to work with public research centers and global biopharmaceutical companies to further development and innovation into new tools and applications to support the biomedical sciences research in Singapore.

The centre was built to recognize the importance of technical support and training to ensure that our customers benefit fully from PerkinElmer's expertise in imaging and detection as well as reagent biology and chemistry. The CoE is equipped with PerkinElmer instruments, software and reagents for biotech, pharmaceutical and academic customers that enable scientific workshops, demonstrations and customer support and training. It also provides classroom courses with topics covering techniques for assay development and training of instrumentation and related analysis software.

Cutting-edge developments include the manufacturing of instruments for atomic absorption spectroscopy and UV/visible spectroscopy to detect both inorganic and organic materials in the environment, food, materials and oil industries.

The facility provides R&D support for the expansion of PerkinElmer's EcoAnalytix solutions family, a revolutionary problem-solving initiative that addresses the global imperatives of food and consumer product safety, water quality and sustainable energy development.

Anonymous said...

Here are more biomedical moves from Singapore.

http://www.sedb.com/edb/sg/en_uk/index/news/articles/singapore_s_highlights23.html#link1