Fields of Activity

The main activities of the biotechnology companies are distinctly distributed: 222 companies (44%) develop new medicines or diagnostic tests for the field of human or animal medicine. Thus, health or ‘red’ biotechnology remains the most important industry segment.
Fields of activity of dedicated biotechnology companiesSource: biotechnologie.de
Fields of activity of biotech companies

An almost equal number of firms has activities that are not focused on one or another sector. Thus, 186 companies (37%) are defined by the OECD as being involved in non-specific applications of biotechnology. Included in this category are companies that are exclusively or predominantly involved in providing services for the biotechnology industry or are suppliers for biotech firms. Companies that carry out contract-based production of biological molecules without conducting any development themselves are also included in this category, which is the second most important segment of the sector.
Accounting for 45 firms (2007:38) in Germany, and much further behind is industrial or ‘white’ biotechnology. Here, the core fields of activity are the development of technical enzymes, new biomaterials or biotechnological production processes. Within the biotechnology sector this application field accounts for 9% of the whole activities. Nevertheless, it should be taken into account that although this field is not a focus of dedicated biotech companies, it is very important for the chemical industry. For this reason, the economic relevance is likely much greater than the data would suggest. Only 26 companies (5%) belong to the category of ‘green’ or agrobiotechnology. Similiar to industrial biotechnology this field is dominated by large companies, so that the economic relevance is also larger than the absolute number of dedicated biotech companies would indicate. A further 22 companies (4%) are active in the field of bioinformatics which is gaining importance for more and more applications.