'Lack of sufficient capacity is a greatest challenge facing the biomanufacturing industry today'

Univercells Technologies, incorporated in Belgium in 2020 with the support of the Univercells group, is a global provider of innovative biomanufacturing technologies to achieve cost-effective viral production from R&D to commercial scales.

- Dr Manbeena Chawla

With more infrastructure in place, and a lot more data to work with, the company is now actively pursuing expansion of its portfolio to bring unique benefits across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. To find out more about the company’s growth plans and the trends in the biomanufacturing industry in the APAC region, BioSpectrum Asia spoke to Mathias Garny, Chief Executive Officer, Univercells Technologies in detail. Edited excerpts-

What were the key highlights of FY 21-22 at Univercells Technologies, particularly for the APAC market?

Our executive team has been focused on strengthening our corporate foundation with R&D innovation, as well as expanding the global partner network we have at Univercells Technologies. This has included creating more strategic alliances with academic and research institutions, and go-to-market strategies, to overcome gaps and work toward standardising technology solutions for the biologics and advanced therapy manufacturing sectors.

We have appointed more distributors in FY 2022 (channel strategy) and targeted effort has been placed on expanding in-person APAC presence, as well, with hiring in China.

What major plans are in store for the APAC market this year? Any new partnerships, investments, products in the pipeline?