CHICAGO-According to the recent Life Sciences Cluster Report by Jones Lang LaSalle, trends in this particular industry flow from the desire for profit by both the companies and their host communities. This sector, one of the leaders in the office/industrial market, is growing out of its major markets in the United States, Europe and Japan and into emerging markets such as Asia and Latin America, following demand and potential efficiencies in the biological markets.
In this expansion, life science firms are looking for cheaper areas to build new facilities, and emerging foreign markets such as China, India and Indonesia are creating tech centers to welcome them. However, it remains to be seen whether communities can provide enough “tipping points” to allow the successful growth of a life science cluster.
Bill Barrett, executive managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle, tells GlobeSt.com that the criteria for the top clusters seems to be an educated workforce, availability of venture capital, local higher learning centers and friendly political structures. “In Chicago, for example, you have schools like Illinois Institute of Technology and Northwestern, but no venture capital,” Barrett says. “So the companies that might start there go elsewhere.”
Barrett says the current geographic leaders in life science centers are not losing steam. The new activity in emerging markets is more about adding to the current global stock. Current leaders include the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, and Germany in Europe; New York City, Boston and California in the United States; and Tokyo, Japan.
Facility size also seems to be affected by these differences. In the current popular life science markets, space is at a premium, and companies are looking to keep progress going in smaller spaces. The emerging markets, however, have plenty of area to build large facilities, says Richard McBlaine, a principal at JLL.
Barrett says if you look at emerging markets in areas such as Latin America and Asia, governments are jumping in on their own with these tipping points. Singapore has launched a 2.4-million-square-foot research park called Biopolis, the Butantan Institute in Brazil is the largest producer of immunobiologics and biopharmaceuticals in Latin America and China’s five-year plan includes programs designed to stimulate growth in sectors such as biotechnology. “These governments are jumping in with their own tipping points, bringing the money and building these large industrial parks,” Barrett says. “The question remains whether they will materialize without all the tipping points.”
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