GenIbet

: a biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing start-up

Abstract

The thesis that is by this means present under the form of a case study intends to emphasize the challenges faced by a Portuguese start-up, Genibet, upon its initial years of operations and the need to grow internationally. The case study may also be used as a learning tool, once it enables instructors and students to apply strategic knowledge and frameworks on a real life situation of a company. Genibet is a biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing organization that provides cell, bacterial and viral production services to biopharmaceutical companies and clinical research institutes. Genibet’s services comprise the production of cell banks, virus banks, plasmid DNA, polysaccharides, vaccines and virus with therapeutic activity, recombinant proteins, cells for cell therapy and virus like particles. After analyzing the environment of the bio-CMOs industry, we were able to make some important keynotes:  The biopharmaceutical CMO market amounted to over $ 3 billion in 2013 compared to approximately $ 2 billion in 2011. Regarding the two production segments within the whole market, the most relevant one is the animal cells segment (mammalian) since it is expected to have a CAGR of 14,2% (2011- 2018) against a CAGR in between 10%-15% of the whole market.  To address start-ups and clinical/research groups needs, the more adequate providers are the small contract manufacturing organizations since they have just the right size and capacity.  The regions in the world with emergent countries are where the industry will experience greater growth, meaning that the larger CMOs will tend to move to those places. For the small-medium CMOs will be left to cover the mature regions where the growth will not be as fast – Europe and US. The aim of the case study was to scrutinize Genibet’s current situation and strategy in order to find some possible improvement solutions for the coming years. Together with a mission to offer customers excellency and flexibility of services that will provide evolution of biological investigation, the company’s values rely on “Safety, Commitment, Excellence, Flexibility and Groupwork”. Thus, three segments were analyzed: Client segments, Production Segments and Geographic Segments. The hereby displayed case is based on a small company’s real life situation and its efforts to stay on the market through competitive advantage generated by its different Business Model structure.

Date of Award	16 Feb 2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Susana Frazão Ferreira Fernandes Pinheiro (Supervisor)