The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Ambitious £8 billion target for Scottish life sciences
GROWTH BLUEPRINT: Aims include increasing number of Scottish companies operating overseas, and promoting the country as location of choice for the life sciences sector
A new document outlining the life sciences strategy for Scotland – 2025 vision was launched earlier this year.
The ambition is to significantly grow annual turnover of life sciences north of the border to £8 billion in less than a decade.
Four strategic themes have been selected as key to the sector:
Innovation and commercialisation – Priorities for action will include capitalising on the work of the innovation and excellence centres, supporting scale-up operations to maximise the impact on the economy, and growing and strengthening the entrepreneurial base.
Sustainable production – Changing the environment for, and approach to, the production of life sciences products will allow more of the intellectual assets developed here to lead to production in Scotland.
Internationalisation – Life sciences is a global market and the aim is to increase the number of Scottish companies and organisations successfully operating overseas, and promote Scotland as a location of choice for life sciences.
Business environment – There will be a focus on some core aspects of the business environment critical to supporting the sector’s growth.
The strategy launch was carried out by Dave Tudor, industry chairman of Life Sciences Scotland – the life sciences industry leadership group (ILG).
The strategy was developed by a group including Mr Tudor, ILG members and contributors from the key life sciences subsectors.
Latest figures from 2014 show that the sector employed more than 37,000 people across around 700 organisations.
Company turnover was in excess of £4.2bn annually and gross value added (GVA) was around £2bn.
Between 2010 and 2014, company turnover increased by 29%, GVA by 24% and total employment by 13%.
Scotland has seen a number of international companies looking to expand their presence here.
Around £300 million has been invested over the past three years across the sector by businesses including Capsugel, GSK, Johnson Matthey, Piramal Healthcare, Quotient and ThermoFisher Scientific.
A number of new companies have located in Scotland, including Cellexus, Dexcom and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, HCi Viocare, Orion Health, Sinovet and Greengage.
In the last two years, Scotland has attracted significant international investment through acquisition.
Nikon bought medical technology company Optos, which will become the cornerstone of its new medical group; Biopta was acquired by Reprocell, a Japanese stem cell specialist; medical technology giant Medtronic purchased anaesthesia specialist Aircraft Medical; Merck bought IOmet Pharma; French specialist Sartorius Stedim acquired BioOutsource; and Icelandic prosthetics specialist Ossur acquired Touch Bionics.
Scotland has also enhanced its investment offering in recent years, leading to Epidarex establishing a £50m venture fund supported by a diverse range of investors, including Eli Lilly’s first venture fund investment in the UK.
With 30% of its portfolio in life sciences, the Scottish Investment Bank is one of the most active investor in the sector in the UK.
It has invested £39m in the area over the last five years, leveraging £98.6m in private funds.