News

2009-10-15 Event: Biotechnica 2009 in Hannover – Sum-up

„The importance of biotechnology is now firmly anchored in people’s minds.” said Stephan Ph. Kühne, Member of the Deutsche Messe Management Board. Biotechnica guested over 11,000 trade visitors from 40 different countries in contrary to the organizers’ expectations. Astonishingly, also exhibitor numbers increased by 21 percent in comparison to last year, reaching 650 exhibitors from 28 nations. The most recent biotech products presented in the trade fair find application in health care, food production, industrial and environmental protection sectors. Around one-third of all exhibitors were coming from abroad, including the CE region.

Foreign exhibitors came mainly from such countries as France, Switzerland, the United States and the United Kingdom. The main reasons to come that the exhibitors claim were initiating new business contacts and refreshing the existing relations.

Several companies from the Central European region also participated in the trade fair. Hungary was represented by ChemAxon and 3DHISTECH, Latvia - by BioSan and ELMI and Estonia - by Civilistra and Genorama. Romanian Ministry of Education showed achievements of the national research institutes.
Some of the companies came to Biotechnica to look for clients, like Estonian K-DES providing innovative replacement of formalin to academics. Other CE firms aim at establishment of new distributor networks. 3DHISTECH from Budapest wishes to expand export from academics to clinics.



Biotechnica was named the main biotech event in Europe by delegates of German government. Strategies to implement a "bio-based” economy in the continent were a subject of discussion between representatives of the European Commission, the German Ministry for Education and Research and Henkel, Sud-Chemie and Volkswagen corporations.

Among half of the visitors number consisted of R&D and science sector specialists. Their motivation for visiting the event was based on the wish to learn about latest innovations and to receive feedback of the market.

The Biotechnica conference program hosted over 500 speakers from industry, research and government. Bioinformatics and protein engineering were made the leading themes, and both received positive responses from the audience.

The partnering activity engaged international participants from 190 companies. The number of business-to-business meetings was 30 percent higher than last year.

The last event day was dedicated to career in the life sciences sector. Jobvector filled its career day with presentation of companies and their job offers. They also organized on-site verification of job applications by HR specialists and job interviews with recognized companies in the field, such as Merck, i3, Abbott, Innovex.

More information can be found in the Biotechnica 2009 End-of-show report.

Magdalena Zychlinska-Jackiewicz