Growth of Biotechnology industry in BrazilFintan Walton:
Hello and welcome to PharmaTelevision News Review here at BIO in Boston, in 2012. On this show I have Igor Brandao, who is with Apex a Brazilian organization, welcome to the show.
Igor Brandao:
Yes, thank you for the invitation. I am a Project Manager at Apex-Brasil which is the official body for the federal government to exploit internalization, promotion and investment FDI attraction.
Fintan Walton:
Okay. So part of that remit that you have includes biotechnology and could you tell us, give us a perspective of what biotechnology is happening in Brazil right now?
Igor Brandao:
Yes, we are very excited about this sector in Brazil, we realize that it's growing very fast. We have four main areas related to this sector in Brazil for instance Agribusiness, Energy, Healthcare and we have our some attention, more attention related to Agribusiness because of the potential of Brazil and bioenergy, some technologies related to biofuels our energy matrix is very clean and internationaly recognized as a clean matrix and this field is very rich in terms of contribution to all these areas.
Fintan Walton:
Right, so in terms of how biotechnology is applied particularly in the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare industry, if I was a biotechnology company why would I want to look at Brazil?
Igor Brandao:
Okay, so we have solid institutional representation in Brazil, our regulatory issues almost totally organized, we have many, many official bodies that take care of all the regulatory legislation issues, so it's a very stable environment to make an investment and a huge potential, we have 200 million inhabitants, it's a huge market, we've been growing 4.5% our GDP for the last eight-years, so in terms of market, in terms of the quality of the technology we produce in Brazil, we have human resources, very qualified, some programs related to improvement of this human resources so there are many positive actions and results going on in Brazil especially related to biotech and some of the multinational already decided to establish themselves in Brazil, Apex actually has helped some of them in this achievements.
Opportunities in Brazil's biodiverse environmentFintan Walton:
Sure, so I mean you've mentioned you know biodiversity, I mean biodiversity within Brazil obviously the Amazon is one of these incredibly rich biodiverse areas in the world, so how many companies are actually looking at that within Brazil is that still an untapped opportunity?
Igor Brandao:
For sure, absolutely we have many Brazilian companies that are already exploring this environment, there are at least two clusters of companies established in Manaus which is the capital of Amazon's state and Belem which is the capital of Para, another state, that explore this environment in order to have it extract from this biodiversity. It's a huge potential and they are totally into this recently and for the next years for sure.
Fintan Walton:
Okay, so there is an opportunity for companies to collaborate with those organizations that are already within Brazil looking at this particular diversity, biodiversity opportunity?
Igor Brandao:
Yes, we have many, many opportunities in terms of partnership, in terms of investment, new facilities so if we take some examples for this show 2012, BIO 2012 we have already set some partnerships in order to produce in a joint model, some products in services and I think this is a huge, huge area and it has huge potential to generate many products in terms of healthcare, and biofuel, and so on.
Fintan Walton:
Intriguing, so there is a great opportunity there?
Fintan Walton:
Igor, thank you very much indeed for coming on the show.
Igor Brandao:
Right, thank you. I appreciate it.