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(Last updated: 15 Nov 2011)
Trends and opportunities
The market
While the biotechnology industry is on the move in Taiwan, supported by strong government funding and private sector interest, there are some inherent weaknesses that provide opportunities for Australia.
Taiwan’s major weakness is the lack of experience in areas such as:
- Regulatory approval
- Pre-clinical trials and verification
- Protocol design
Bridging this gap with Taiwan’s renowned manufacturing and capital investment capacity will result in quick and aggressive development of this sector. Anti-cancer, anti-ageing, tissue culture, herbal medicine, medical devices, bio chip and informatics are hot topics in biotechnology development and Taiwan is looking for the products and/or technology to develop new drugs in these areas. Leading pharmaceutical firms are very aggressive in seeking new product development, providing opportunity for Australian biotechnology investors and research companies.
The Taiwan Government has recognised the importance of supporting the biotechnology industry and has backed this support with new initiatives such as the National Development Fund under the Executive Yuan. The Industrial Development Bureau in the Ministry of Economic Affairs reported that Taiwan’s biotechnology industry (including new biotech, pharmaceuticals and medical devices) value reached NT$228.6 billion in 2010. The long-term objective is for Taiwan to hold three per cent of the world’s biotechnology market.
Because of the government’s strong commitment to biotechnology and the global investment favouritism in this area, Taiwan’s private sector has quickly developed interest in biotechnology. More than 50 private companies are now active in this industry. These include:
- Pharmaceuticals:
- Yung Shin
- China Chemical and Pharmaceutical Standard
- Sin-tong
- Everight
- Sinphar
- Food:
- The President Group
- Wei Chuan
- Kingcar
- AGV
- Chemical:
- Formosa Plastics Group
- China Synthetic Rubber
- Government-owned enterprises:
- Taiwan Sugar
- Taiwan Salt
- Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Board
- China Petroleum Corporation
Other major players include China Steel, Lucky Cement, Yao Hua Glass and YFY Paper.
Opportunities
The best opportunities for Australian biotechnology companies are in developing:
- New dosage forms
- Protein drugs
- Animal and or plant derived products
- Modernised Chinese herbal medicines
- Intermediates of bulk pharmaceutical
- Clinical trials
Three other areas of opportunity are new drug development, clinical trial cooperation, and bio–informatics.
There are a number of Australian companies already active in the market that are involved in a range of enterprises such as the development of anti-cancer compounds, toll manufacture of biomedical products and cochlear implant technology.
Competitive environment
Major global pharma (such as GSK, Novartis) are quite active in Taiwan. They have their subsidiaries in Taiwan conducting the sales and marketing, and R&D cooperation. However, due to the cost concerns, all the big pharma have moved their manufacturing bases out of Taiwan in the past few years.
Local pharmaceutical firms are mainly small and medium enterprises manufacturing the generic and OTC products. To capture the biotechnology trend, these local pharmaceuticals firms are entering into the new drug dosage, or delivery development as well as the Chinese herbal medicine development.
Taiwan’s medical device industry is very good at the manufacturing of the electronics oriented medical devices. Some of the local medical manufacturers provide the OEM service for the international brands. The medical devices industry association is actively promoting Taiwan’s medical devices in international events.
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