As more and more Swedish life science companies begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, i.e. the market, new questions need to be addressed. The choice of distribution channels, sales organization and branding are of course things that should have been included along the way, but become more pressing closer to the goal.
Erika, you are a long-standing biotech company with more than a thousand products on the market already. In this way, you are unusual in Swedish home-grown life science, but you are also competing with the big giants. What is your strategy for reaching markets worldwide?
The antibody market in the world is huge, but we chose early on to focus on a niche part of the market, specializing in antibodies against plant and algal proteins, products that not many others offer. This means that potential distributors often contact us and ask to include our products in their range. We have focused on building a broad distributor network with good and active dealers, which is particularly valuable in more remote markets. We now have distributors in 30 different countries.
Another strength is that since 2020 Agrisera is part of Olink Proteomics, a Swedish company with global operations that offers cutting-edge technology in protein analysis. This gives us access to a robust network and customers in the Life Science sector in Sweden, Europe, the US and in Asia/China.
The issue that is top of mind for almost the entire industry now is skills supply. How do you work locally in Umeå and the surrounding area to address this?
We notice this clearly in the north as well, several life science companies in Umeå and the surrounding area are on the rise now while new companies are establishing themselves in the region. There are good initiatives for collaborations between companies and academia in Umeå and it is crucial that we work together to make the labor market visible and give students the right conditions.
What do you want the cooperation between regional actors and SwedenBIO to look like to benefit companies from north to south in the supply of skills?
It is important to highlight that the labor market in life science in Umeå and in other parts of the country is so strong and this needs to be done across regional borders. Here SwedenBIO can play an important role. This is something Agrisera also wants to contribute to.
