Rami Swiss, a subsidiary of the North American antenna specialist Rami with headquarters in the state of Michigan, has put a new production site into operation in Courtételle in the canton of Jura. Antennas for military radio equipment will be manufactured there, among other things. The company was founded in Delémont, also in the canton of Jura, in 2021 before moving its Swiss headquarters to Courtételle a year ago, where work started on converting a former factory.

Elbit Systems Switzerland is the company’s contracting entity and, so far, its only client. It is the Swiss subsidiary of one of the three largest Israeli defense companies and exporters in Haifa and is located in Bern. It been operating for the Swiss Armed Forces for decades. Elbit Systems will now manufacture in Switzerland for the first time at the factory in Jura.

Settlement due to proximity to Basel and France

According to Le Quotidien Jurassien, the factory is distinctive: it is the first in Switzerland to target direct compensation transactions, as Member of the Council of States for Jura Charles Juillard explained at the opening. This means that a foreign manufacturer must share a portion of orders with local companies when it comes to Swiss military procurement. Jakob Baumann, Member of the Board of Directors at Elbit Systems Switzerland, commented to the local radio station RFJ: “The requirements for compensation business are a stimulus for companies to manufacture in Switzerland. We have decided to go one step further and manufacture not only components but also antennas here.”

According to Le Quotidien Jurassien, various reports state that the settlement in Jura was above all possible due to the available area, the proximity to Basel and France, and the exchange with the location and innovation promotion agency Basel Area Business & Innovation. Rami Swiss currently employs 20 “highly skilled” members of staff and benefits from the “region’s history of watch production” according to Baumann. According to CEO Forrest Colliver, the aim is to “rapidly increase their numbers to 25” and find new printed circuit board clients “not just in the military sector.”

Published in Outsourced Pharma

Pharmaceutical companies continue to turn to CDMOs to boost efficiency and productivity in their efforts to progress new targets through to commercialization. While many factors can dictate the choice of partner, the location of a CDMO can have a significant influence on the communications channels, facilities, and skillsets that a potential partner has to offer.

The ever-increasing complexity of drug development is forcing many pharma companies and CDMOs to rethink their business models. What has worked in previous decades may not necessarily be fit for purpose in the coming years. Outsourcing drug development and manufacturing to contract organizations will likely continue its upward trend, but how and where they operate is potentially in flux. Choice of location is especially in the spotlight and is highly dependent on numerous factors, none more so than access to the talent needed to drive business growth.

Resources are shifting westward

For the past two decades, innovator pharma companies have largely outsourced drug development and select manufacturing — including generics — to India and China, for the obvious economic advantage: labor and capacity are both abundant and affordable, which helps to keep costs down without sacrificing on speed. However, CDMO Primopus (formerly Escientia Switzerland), a subsidiary of the Indian company Deccan Fine Chemicals, has chosen the Basel area in Switzerland as its location. The company is taking a slightly different approach than traditional drug development and manufacturing models, with location firmly at the forefront of the conversation.

The medicines that were discovered 20 or 30 years ago were based on relatively simple chemistries compared to more recent active ingredients, which are increasingly complex and diverse. Nowadays, they often contain elaborate molecular structures, requiring more precise and complex workflows in the R&D and production phases, as well as having to comply with more GMP regulations.

More complex drug development

The more complex drugs become to develop, the more CDMOs will need to rely on specific locations to fill the shortfall of personnel. China and India have been able to deliver against expectations until now, but a side effect of this outsourcing has been a growing shortage of talent elsewhere. Adding to the complexity is the diverse expertise required in running a biopharma company or a CDMO — from supply chain, QA, and quality control to R&D and engineering — that needs careful orchestration across the board. “In fact,” says Velterop, “it is essential that every stage is meticulously calibrated because, if there is a deviation, a batch could be rejected or, worse, potentially become a dangerous product for the patient. This is compounded by the sheer number of medicines currently available, which is only increasing every year.”

To help face these challenges, drug sponsors and CDMOs are more closely collaborating, ensuring a safe and consistent product, and this includes creating regional supply chains and reducing reliance on a single geography as a source of raw materials. Companies like Primopus are offering a hybrid model, where they will do the critical final stages of development and manufacturing in the U.S. or Europe — the Basel area in this example — and the upstream part in other locations.

A city with all the ingredients for biopharma success

The Basel area has grown into a world-class life sciences hub, with over 700 companies across various sectors calling it home. This includes Big Pharma players, including Novartis and Roche; world-leading CDMOs like Lonza and Bachem, and dynamically growing companies such as Primopus, Celonic, and ten23 health. However, it’s not the only one in Europe. So what, then, is the appeal of this relatively small Swiss region to large, international biopharma companies and the like?

Velterop seems to think it is down to a variety of factors that combine to create the perfect ecosystem, fit for the demands of the industry now and well into the future. He commented, “Switzerland has a high-cost reputation, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for business, as companies have adapted by making efficiency the key to their success. The country is also known for its quality and precision technology, and these are obviously far more important than cost alone. These ingredients — efficiency, quality, and precision technology — are essential in the pharma industry and are a reason Switzerland has established itself as an attractive location for companies in this sector and an important part of why we chose to set up here.”

Beneficial ecosystem for CDMOs

The region of Basel, in particular, provides a beneficial ecosystem for CDMOs, as it already has an established pharma community, including big names — such as Roche, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson — and a whole host of other companies and startups. As a result, the area benefits from a lot of innovation arising in various sub-sectors, creating a balanced profile with all the facets needed for drug development. The supply chain is also well established there, and the local government provides an incredible framework for innovative businesses. Furthermore, Basel’s central European location — bordering France and Germany — and its proximity to international airports with direct flights to the U.S. and elsewhere make it easy to feed into the global supply chain.

“These factors are all important, obviously, but the most crucial contributor to our business model — and any company in this sector, for that matter — is access to specialized talent. Running a biopharma company or a CDMO requires a wide range of personnel from various backgrounds, which can be difficult to find in one place. There is competition, but the Basel area offers a large pool of professionals who thrive on opportunities. We’re currently recruiting in Switzerland and plan to soon double our staff,” concluded Velterop.

Summary

Life sciences has undergone tremendous change in recent times, driven by both unprecedented growth and scientific complexity. The pharma industry is no exception and, as outlined, it is in a state of flux, with traditional drug development models potentially unable to keep pace with current and future demands. Like never before, human resources have become the deciding growth factor, as the industry needs not only brilliant scientific minds but also a whole team of personnel from various backgrounds. In response, some CDMOs, including Primopus, are setting up operations in innovative ecosystems like the Basel area, as well as tweaking their operations, to ensure they become or remain a desirable partner.

You might also be interested to learn about cell and gene therapies gaining momentum in Basel and why so many life science and biotech companies wing their way to the Basel Area.

In addition, we can provide more information about:

• Working in Switzerland
• Expats in Switzerland
• Moving to Switzerland (a simple guide)
• Switzerland startup ecosystem

According to a recent press release, the Basel-based cleantech startup KUORI is developing innovative materials from food waste, such as banana skins and nut shells. The first results of the developments are elastic, bio-based and biodegradable materials that can be used in the soles of shoes. Due to friction, the soles of our shoes constantly deposit microplastics when we walk. “We want to use our bio-based, biodegradable and elastic materials where they bring the greatest benefit for the environment”, comments Sarah Harbarth, founder and CEO of KUORI. “Unlike conventional plastics, which take hundreds of years to degrade in nature, our materials are industrially compostable”, she adds.

Founded in 2022, the company has closed 2.3 million euros in financing since being launched last March. This funding is to be used to facilitate the rapid market launch of the new materials in the first half of this year, in addition to being put towards the search for competent industrial partners and the expansion of the market chain.

Five Basel startups in the Circular Economy Incubator

Investors include the Eurostars program of the European Union, the Swiss innovation agency Innosuisse, the innovation fund of the Alternative Bank Switzerland and the Gebert Rüf Foundation, in addition to private investors. KUORI is also supported by Venture Monitoring from the investment and innovation promotion agency Basel Area Business & Innovation. In addition, the startup has made it into the Circular Economy Incubator 2022-2023 from the Circular Economy Transition. Alongside KUORI, other Basel-based startups such as GreenUp, Glacé Löööv, Food Factory and Happie will receive financial backing from this platform.

The two Swiss companies Parashift and Business Systems Integration (BSI) will cooperate on a technological level in the future. BSI, a leading company for CRM and CX software based in Baden in the canton of Aargau, is integrating the machine learning-based software for the banking sector from Parashift, which is headquartered in Sissach in the canton of Basel-Landschaft. This software is intended to save banks and insurance companies a considerable amount of time in the automatic classification of documents and the extraction of data.

“BSI has an amazing footprint in the banking and insurance sector. We’re delighted to work with BSI in the future and improve efficiency through the combination of the two platforms”, comments Alain Veuve, founder and CEO of Parashift, in a press release issued by his company.

Parashift named as a Technology Leader

Parashift points out that in the banking sector, many different document types with a wide variety of layouts have to be processed, especially for mortgage files. Moreover, they are presented in structured, semi-structured or completely unstructured form, which is a manual and tedious process for employees work through, as the traditional data extraction solutions used are not suitable for this degree of complexity. With the now automated mortgage process, all data can be separated, classified and extracted, a process which now takes just a few hours instead of several weeks.

The Parashift platform was officially launched on the market 20 months ago. As the company has now announced, it has been named by the globally active North American management consulting firm Quadrant Solutions as a Technology Leader in its recently published SPARK Matrix 2022.

Gamma Technologies (GT) is acquiring the FEMAG software portfolio. FEMAG is an electromagnetic simulation solution for electrical machines based on the physical finite element method. It has been continually further developed and enhanced by ProFEMAG AG and Semafor Informatik und Energie AG, which are both based in Basel. The project was first launched at the Institute of Electrical Machines at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) in 1982.

FEMAG technologies have been integrated in the GT-SUITE system simulation platform from Gamma Technologies. They facilitate “a complete design solution for batteries, electric drives and power electronics”, explains Dimple Shah, GT President and CEO, in a press release issued by his company.

Global Center of Excellence in Basel

“The tight integration of our solutions into the GT-SUITE system simulation platform has opened new possibilities for the engineering community”, comments Walter Egli, CEO of ProFEMAG, in the press release, before adding that GT’s culture of innovation “provides an excellent home for FEMAG technologies and people”.  According to Dr. Ronald Tanner, CTO of Semafor, this “next chapter with GT” will enable the company “to accelerate the pace of development”.

For future cooperation with ProFEMAG and Semafor, GT plans to set up a Global Center of Excellence in Basel. This will be an innovation hub for the research, development and deployment of multiphysics simulation technologies for the next generation of high-efficiency electric machine applications. The investment and innovation promotion agency Basel Area Business & Innovation will be supporting this project.

The digital revolution is changing every facet of how businesses and healthcare organizations operate.

What Advanced Manufacturing means for the biopharma industry

For pharmaceutical powerhouses like Basel-based Roche and Novartis, the revolution in data science and advanced digital technologies is transforming patient care.

Novartis says its goal is to reach twice as many patients, twice as fast, and realize sizeable productivity improvements in its manufacturing facilities. It believes that through its digital strategies, it has the potential to reduce the time to market for new drugs by more than two years.

Roche adds that the days of mass treatments, which weren’t effective for all, have now largely evolved into a new era of personalized healthcare with a more holistic view of patient health generated from a wide variety of data sources.

Such a data-driven patient-centric ecosystem requires a high level of coordination, standardization, and analysis, all of which rely on the collaboration of healthcare companies and technology partners. Perfect chemistry for seeding growth in supporting technology companies in both healthcare and manufacturing in general.

Who are the key players in the field of Advanced Manufacturing in the Basel Area?

Endress+Hauser is a global leader in measurement instrumentation, and services and solutions for industrial process engineering. The company uses a cloud-based Industrial IoT (Internet of Things) ecosystem to connect the physical and the digital world. It uses digitalization to make knowledge available to customers to help them optimize their processes and make fact-based decisions fast.

Headquartered in central Basel, the Straumann Group epitomizes the Swiss reputation for quality, precision, and innovation. Employing a global workforce of around 9,000 people. It’s a world leader in dental implantology. It researches, develops, manufactures, and supplies dental implants, instruments, biomaterials, CADCAM prosthetics, digital equipment including a range of sophisticated 3D printers and software, and clear aligners for applications in replacement, restorative, orthodontic and preventative dentistry.

Skan is a Swiss company and a global market and technological leader for isolators, cleanroom devices, and decontamination processes for the aseptic production of biopharmaceutical substances. Today it has more than 1000 employees. More than half of its employees work at the Allschwil headquarters in the Life Sciences Hub of the Basel region.

In 2020, Tokyo-based Yokogawa, a global leader in industrial automation and test and measurement solutions, established a subsidiary  Yokogawa Innovation Switzerland in Basel to accelerate R&D and market development activities for its bio-economy business. At its new offices in Allschwil, it has been joined by Yokogawa Europe’s existing Swiss branch for its industrial automation business.

The rise of the Smart Factory

Among the many significant advances in manufacturing, processes, and production in recent times is the increased use of technology and automation. It has led to what is described as “Smart manufacturing” or the “Smart Factory”. Broadly, it’s about employing computer controls, computer modelling, big data, robotics, and other automation to improve manufacturing efficiencies.

Key players in the field of Advanced Manufacturing in the Basel Area include:

Actemium Schweiz AG offers engineering services and projects in the areas of Mechanical Execution Systems (MES), electrical engineering, and industrial and building automation. Across six businesses, it employs over 200 people.

Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Basel, Medartis is one of the world’s leading manufacturers and providers of medical devices and titanium implants for fixing bone fractures and head injuries. It employs around 700 people across its 14 locations globally, with products offered in over 50 countries and annual sales of CHF 160 million.

An exciting recent development has seen the establishment of uptownBasel, a 70,000 square meter international centre of excellence for Industry 4.0. On a site at Arlesheim, a development and production hub has been created where selected technology companies and other organizations will be located. The focus is on industrial manufacturing, healthcare and logistics sectors as well as the interdisciplinary function of digitalisation. As a platform for connected companies, uptownBasel aims to drive knowledge transfer between sectors and disciplines.

One of the first companies to take advantage of the opportunities and facilities provided by uptownBasel was VINCI Energies, the energy, information and communication technology division of the global VINCI Group. It recently set up an international security operations center (SOC) in uptownBasel with its brands Axians (ICT) and Actemium (industrial technology). As a hub, the SOC will connect more than 300 cybersecurity specialists from Switzerland, Germany and other European countries, focusing on Industry 4.0 security, bundling expertise in information and communications technology (ICT) and industrial operating technology (OT), as well as processing the findings from international scientific collaborations regarding critical infrastructures.

So why is the Basel Area such a hotspot for the Advanced Manufacturing sector?

Traditionally, Switzerland has long held a fine reputation for quality, precision, and trust. Think of the watch industry, for instance.

But what makes the Basel Area’s innovative ecosystem unique is that it has been able to attract a wealth of large corporate companies, spin-offs, and start-ups.

There are more than 2,400 companies with manufacturing activities and over 700 life-sciences organizations. It has a combined talent pool of over 63,000 interdisciplinary and highly educated professionals with strong engineering expertise and knowledge transfer capabilities.

Companies are attracted by the area’s key strategic geographical position in the heart of Europe and bordering key markets like Germany and France. There are first-rate road and rail infrastructure and an international airport on the doorstep. There’s progressive Federal and local government, and favorable tax, grant, and venture opportunities.

Basel Area is also a major center for academic and research and development institutions, providing collaboration between top universities, teaching institutions, and industries. These include the University of Basel, HE-Arc  and FHNW – the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Northwest Switzerland.

Besides working in Switzerland, did we also mention the quality-of-life benefits of living in Switzerland, one of the most picturesque regions in Europe?

The Upper Rhine region offers numerous opportunities for further education in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The area, which stretches from Alsace through parts of Baden-Württemberg to the northwestern Swiss cantons of Basel-Stadt, Basel-Landschaft, Jura and all the way to Solothurn, has plenty to offer in terms of AI education and research: the numerous public universities in the Upper Rhine region conduct innovative AI research, train future engineers, computer scientists, software developers and AI analysts and offer customized advanced education programs. In addition, the public actors in innovation promotion develop tools and training courses.

The support of Basel Area Business & Innovation helped 39 new companies establish themselves in the Basel Area. This exceeds the previous year’s figure of 27 company settlements. As the investment and innovation promotion agency for the cantons of Basel-Landschaft, Basel-Stadt and Jura reported, by far the largest share was attributable to the life sciences sector, with 28 new companies. Seven of them operate in the field of digital health. Five new companies in the region work in production and process technology.

The 39 new companies come from 15 countries. Five are from France and five from the USA, three from the United Kingdom and nine from Swiss cantons outside the Basel Area.

Foundation of 76 startups supported

The agency also supported the foundation of 76 startups in the Basel Area in 2021. While this is six fewer than in the previous year, it is the second highest figure ever achieved. The appeal of the Basel Area for new company settlements was enhanced through venture accelerators and incubators launched by the location promotion such as BaseLaunch (biotech), DayOne (digital health), i4Challenge (industrial transformation) and Venture Monitoring, a mentoring for startups service.

The Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area also saw “pleasing” growth. There are now 68 companies and 14 research groups at its sites in Allschwil in the canton of Basel-Landschaft, Basel, Jura and the Novartis Campus. To make space for the growth of the Innovation Park at the Novartis Campus, this will move to a much bigger neighboring building on 1 April.