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2008-09-19 Baltic Biotechnology companies struggle for new reasearches

The Baltic Times features a story on biotechnology companies in the Baltic States, pointing out that companies in Germany and the United States have routinely poached good scientists from the Baltics, luring them away with exciting projects and bigger pay packets.

Now, Baltic biotechnology companies are struggling to reach the critical mass necessary for conducting meaningful research, the newspaper reports.
Jurijs Svonaks, chairman of the Latvian Biotechnology Association, said that the small average size of Latvian biotech companies is a huge stumbling block for progress in the nation that was once the leading biotechnology country in the Soviet Union.
"In the small corporations, it is not possible to do research. There are plans to involve different companies to do research,” Svonaks said.
The LBA Web site says that their main goal is to consolidate companies interested in prospective biotech projects in Latvia.
Svonaks explained that most of the new biotechnology companies began when Latvia joined the European Union, which had funding and requirements for green biotechnology, which focuses on solving environmental problems.
But the new companies haven’t been able to pick up where the Soviet Union left off.
"The beginning of the ’90s there was no demand for the [biotechnology] factories, and they were bankrupted. These factories are now used for other things. Due to this there are not enough big entities. It is not possible to make advances if the organization is small – it cannot do research in a small enough time,” Svonaks said.
The larger companies do not have that problem. Fermentas is a Lithuanian biotechnology company that is among the top five in the world, and it is seeing what its director calls "reverse brain drain.”
Viktoras Butkus, the company’s head, said it is bringing scientists back because it is big enough to offer them meaningful work in their home country.
"They get their good experience in the U.S. and Germany and then they come back,” Butkus said. "It’s not only the money – this is not the main thing. It is important for these people to be able to come home and do things in their own language and teach children their own language, and they can use their qualifications and skills here [at Fermentas],” Butkus said.
Fermentas operates worldwide and produces for over 70 countries. The company’s size guarantees a capacity for progress. "In Lithuania, we don’t have small companies. We [Fermentas] have about 350 employees and Sicor has about 250. There are a few others that are slightly smaller, but they are growing,” Butkus said.
Due to their size, Fermentas, Sicor and other biotech companies in Lithuania have the potential to achieve big scientific breakthroughs. Butkus said that Lithuania is the leader in biotechnology not only in the Baltics, but also in all of Eastern Europe – and in some respects, the world.
"Fermentas exports more than 99% produce to other countries. Not much of the technology is used here. We are a machine pumping things to the world,” he said.
Apart from Fermentas and Sicor, there are small companies in Lithuania who are going down the same path as Latvian companies creating green biotechnologies.
Algimantas Pauliukonis, author and former director of the Lithuanian Institute of Biotechnology, said the push is now for small biotechnology companies to produce more green biotechnology because the EU wants more advancements in this field. He cited new technologies in cleaning oil spills that are being developed in Lithuania.
There are four categories of biotechnology, classed by color: Red involves medical research, green is for the environment, white is for industrial use and blue involves biotechnology for aquatic use.
Source: www.baltic-course.com