NZ Roadshow: Swim together or sink alone

The Biosphere New Zealand Roadshow 2004 has hit the road in Melbourne, arguing the case for a strategic union of the biotechnology industries on either side of the Tasman Sea.

The message, for the agricultural biotechnology sector in particular, is: swim together, or sink alone. For all the substantial achievements of the biotechnology industries in Australia and New Zealand, they're only a blur in the peripheral vision of researchers and investors in North America and Europe.

In a foreword to the New Zealand Biotechnology Company Directory, NZ's research, science, and technology minister, Pete Hodgson noted that, on a per-capita basis, the NZ biotech industry is the more substantial: with only a fifth of Australia's population, NZ's biotech industry is a third the size of Australia's.

Hodgson pointed out that a trans-Tasman union would create the fourth largest biotechnology hub, after the US, Europe and Canada.

Collectively, Australian biotech companies have a combined worth of about $13 billion, and employ more than 10,000 people.

There are currently 45 commercial collaborations between Australian and New Zealand biotech companies, and 39 per cent of NZ companies already have research alliances with companies or agencies in Australia, mainly at the R&D level.

The 2003 Aoris Nova Consulting Bioindustry Review found that NZ accounted for 3219 of the 8863 core biotech employees in the Australasian region -- 36 per cent of employment, from only 17 per cent of the region's population.

The trans-Tasman theme of this year's roadshow is reflected in the fact that two of the three keynote speakers are Australian expats: cancer researcher Prof Peter Smith of the University of Auckland, and Dr Andrew Kelly, chief scientific officer for New Zealand's new $100 million venture capital fund, Life Science Ventures. The third speaker is Prof Peter Shepherd, of the University of Auckland, an international authority on cellular signalling systems.

An audience of Australian biotech executives and researchers at this week's Melbourne launch heard that, while the biomedical research community has spun out a host of new companies in the past decade, both countries have had very limited success creating new agbiotech companies, despite their tradition of excellence in agricultural research.

The New Zealand government launched its hands-across-the-Tasman last June, by signing agreements with the state governments of Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia last June, to create the Australia-New Zealand Biotechnology Alliance.

Hodgson subsequently announced the NZ government had set up a NZ$12 million trans-Tasman Biotechnology Partnership Fund, to encourage NZ companies to pursue development, manufacturing and marketing initiatives with their Australian counterparts, and to exchange personnel to develop their commercial skills.

But New Zealand's consul-general and trade commissioner in Melbourne, Mark Ingram, said that while it was clearly in the interests of New Zealand's biotech companies to collaborate with Australian companies, because of the high costs of research and research infrastructure, the benefits would not flow just one way.

He said the roadshow hoped to make Australian companies aware of how they could benefit from trans-Tasman alliances with NZ companies, and from the expertise available in the agbiotech and biomedical research communities, which complements -- rather than competes with -- Australia's own.

Ingram said North America did not distinguish between the Australian and New Zealand biotech industries, and found it easier to deal with them as a single entity. In recognition of that, Australia and New Zealand will exhibit together, for the first time, at the BIO 2005 biotechnology industry conference in Philadelphia.

The NZ Biosphere Roadshow continued in Brisbane today, then Sydney on Thursday and Adelaide on Friday.