Growing good animal health
Doing it once and doing it right is the philosophy underpinning Bayer’s new development model.
NEW ZEALAND’S RESEARCH and development coffers will get an extra $3 million this year from Bayer New Zealand. The drive behind the R&D spend is a new development model being rolled out by Bayer globally which sees countries focusing their efforts on products that have potential far beyond their own shores.
Bayer New Zealand’s animal health operations have a lot to bring to the table: well- equipped formulation and analytics labs; production facilities and an experienced team.
The new model divides the world into four regional hubs – Europe, Latin America, North America and Asia Pacific – and requires Bayer teams to evaluate the potential of new products for the entire region and to pursue registration in multiple countries.
APAC Regional Development Centre head Dr Richard Emslie says in the past new products were developed for the local market and then, following development, were offered to other markets if it was deemed there was an appetite for the product and if it could gain regulatory approval.
“The approach now is a much more robust assessment upfront so you know which markets the product is being developed for – naturally you are going to have a much better hit rate after that because you don’t have failures around product requirements; you don’t have countries finding out that it’s in the wrong bottle size or formulation, for example.”
“Now, we evaluate the potential across the APAC region and the fit with our animal health strategy, before presenting the Regional Decision Committee with a very sound proposal. In this way we pick the winners early and dedicate our resources only to these projects.”
Dr Emslie says the model also does away with duplicated investments because the committee determines which country will spearhead product development for each project. And that’s where the $3 million comes in. Bayer New Zealand is already recognised for its animal health capabilities primarily in dairy and sheep, forged in part by its acquisition of Bomac in 2011. But the regionalised approach demands more expertise across a greater number of species.
“Until now our pipeline has been mainly focused on dairy and sheep but to cater to the needs of our customers across the APAC region we need to be building expertise and capability in other areas, specifically in swine and aquaculture. Dairy is a big part of it too but we have the capability there so it’s in these other areas we need to build expertise and additional capabilities.”
In addition to investing in R&D internally, Bayer is expecting many of those additional capabilities to come from research partnerships, including one being scoped with a Nelson-based institute to support future aquaculture projects.
“We are not big enough to have all the expertise ourselves, no company is, so what works for us is to collaborate with experts in their field around the country. It is a case of pooling all this expertise to come up with better, more innovative solutions and getting them to market.”
The research partnership model has already been proven to work well for Bayer New Zealand – a collaboration with Massey, Otago and Auckland universities is helping to develop new treatments for mastitis and improvements in bovine reproductive health.
Right now Dr Emslie says the New Zealand team – spread across the company's Glenfield and Manukau facilities – has 30 projects on its books and 80 projects on the go throughout the APAC region.
It’s a busy time for the business but Dr Emslie predicts the planning and investment in getting products right upfront will deliver results in the future.
“We are in a strong position to pick the projects that will deliver the most for our customers in the APAC region and for the company as a whole. It’s outcome- driven innovation. We filter out the non-viable projects and can focus our efforts on the best ideas with the greatest potential.”