‘Industry must leverage technological innovations to maximise profits’

Millipore is a high-tech bioscience company that provides technologies, tools and services for the development and production of new therapeutic drugs. The company, headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts, USA, serves the life science research, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries across the world. Senior officials from Millipore Julian Alonso, Director, (Millipore India); Michel Bourderioux, Technology and Sales Support Manager (Europe); M S Mahadevan, Vice-President, Biopharmaceutical Division, Millipore-India and H S Dayananda, Business Manager in a tete-e-tete with R BabyManoj share information on Millipore and its operations.

M S Mahadevan	H S Dayananda

Please elaborate on the activities of Millipore as an MNC in the pharmaceutical sector?

Mahadevan: Millipore is a multinational company with a presence in more than 32 countries. We have manufacturing and R&D facilities around the world. With a global infrastructure, Millipore services multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, food and beverage companies as well as regional and national firms, universities and research institutes.

Millipore provides technology, tools and services for the development and production of new therapies and drugs. Our vision is to become the partner of choice for critical tools, technology and services used in the discovery, development and manufacture of new therapeutic compounds.

Who are your clients?

Dayanand: We are dealing with 25 plus life science companies which basically take our products for laboratories in their research. A large number of pharmaceutical and biotech companies, food and beverage companies, government organisations, clinical research companies etc also are our customers.

Could you tell us more about your products and applications?

Mahadevan: Millipore serves the biosciences market, defined as research and manufacturing within the areas of genomics, proteomics, drug discovery, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Several thousand devices, products and systems serve the 300,000 laboratories around the world, as well as the 2,500 major biotechnology, pharmaceutical and contract manufacturing companies.

Millipore technology is used for a wide range of applications from protein sample preparation to vaccine sterilisation to monoclonal antibody production. Recent new products include new versions of MultiScreen membrane-based multi-well plates for molecular biology applications and Opticap cartridges for biotechnology drug manufacturing. Millipore lab water systems are essential to research and analytical laboratory work and are a product choice in laboratories worldwide.

Millipore also offers custom-engineered purification systems that are built and configured to fit within a manufacturing process for pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals. In addition, Millipore provides consulting and customer support services for high-value applications.

Millipore technology is particularly critical for new life science research applications in genomics, proteomics and drug discovery and for the sterilisation and purification of new biotech therapeutics.

What is your global and domestic market share?

Michel Bourderioux	Julian Alonso

Julian Alonso: We usually do not like to talk about our market share. Not because its confidential information, but because we like keep a low profile—the way gentlemen do without disparaging anyone. We respect our competition as it keeps us on our toes. We enjoy a dominant market share worldwide. In the domestic market, we have more than half the market share. As far as the export market is concerned, our ‘validation’ and areas of quality control and microbiological area play a significant role and we enjoy near market dominance.

Could you tell us about the difference between Millipore’s presence in India and China? Also would you make a comparison between your sizes in both the countries?

Michel Bourderioux: We are a major player in China. The difference is that in China we have a subsidiary kind of business whereas here we have a partnership. Overall, our size in China is bigger. Still, our growth in India is much higher compared to China.

What do you think will be the scenario since India embraced the product patent regime?

Mahadevan: It is truly a welcome move. This will help towards consolidation in the industry. In Europe, 25 years ago, there were some 2,000 pharma companies. Now, instead, there are somewhere around 12 giant pharma companies. The situation is going to be similar here too.

Could you throw some light on the international ‘Millipore Foundation’.

Julian Alonso: It is a non-profit organisation. Its mission includes supporting Millipore’s interest in scientific and technological advancement, supporting specific public policy issues that affect Millipore’s stockholders, employees and customers, improving the quality of life in Millipore’s communities and assisting and encouraging Millipore’s employees in volunteer efforts. We have won several awards in the areas of business ethics and social responsibility as well as US EPA Awards for protecting the environment.

The Foundation sponsors a variety of programmes that encourage Millipore employee participation in charity. The ‘Matching Gift Programme’ and the ‘Voluntary Service Grant Programme’ provide support for eligible community projects and programmes in which employees are actively involved.

The skills bank programme offers our employees the opportunity to reach out and help others in their communities by sharing their time and skills with nonprofit organizations. The Millipore Retirees Volunteer Program offers the same volunteer opportunities to former employees of the company.

What has been the response to the seminar on ‘‘Web of Aseptic Processing’’ conducted in Bangalore?

Mahadevan: We organised this programme previously in November 2002 and the response was really good. Our customers are keenly tracking the advances in the market. They are looking for more product and process knowledge in an unprecedented way. This prompted us to organise it in a bigger way this time and it became overwhelmingly successful.

What are your expansion plans?

Julian Alonso: Our expansion will be more in the area of services that we have to offer. We are helping our customers to increase their revenue and to ensure best quality of products.

This will be achieved through our validation group and our process finding group, helping them to optimise the process, minimise the operating cost, helping them to improve the productivity. Currently, we have offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Hyderabad. We do not have further expansion plans at the moment.

—rbmanoj@expressindia.com