Life sciences industry in Switzerland

The life sciences industry in Switzerland directly and indirectly employs about 135,000 people. It contributes 5.7% of the gross domestic product of Switzerland and 30% of the country's exports. In 2017 about 30% of Swiss exports were chemical products. In the same year Switzerland was the second largest exporter of packaged medicine in the world, with about 11% of the global total, worth $36.5 billion.
Switzerland is home to many pharmaceutical companies, including very large groups, such as Novartis and Hoffmann-La Roche. In 2013, 41 life science companies had their international headquarters in Switzerland.

History

1896: foundation of Hoffmann-La Roche.
1933: foundation of Interpharma.
1950s: Cilag merged with Janssen Pharmaceutica, into Janssen-Cilag.
1996: Ciba-Geigy merged with Sandoz, with the pharmaceutical and agrochemical divisions of both staying together to form Novartis. Other Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz businesses were sold off, or, like Ciba Specialty Chemicals, were spun off as independent companies. The Sandoz brand disappeared for three years, but was revived in 2003 when Novartis consolidated its generic drugs businesses into a single subsidiary and named it Sandoz.
1990: Hoffmann-La Roche owned a majority of Genentech. It was to be completely integrated in 2009.
2000: Novartis divested its agrochemical and genetically modified crops business with the spinout of Syngenta, in partnership with AstraZeneca, which also divested its agrochemical business.
2023: Sandoz spun off from Novartis as a stand-alone company.

Companies

A number of life sciences companies are either headquartered in Switzerland or maintain regional headquarters in Switzerland:

Company

Location

Canton

Divisions

Abbott Laboratories

Basel

Basel-Stadt

Life sciences

70% of the investments in life sciences in Europe are made in the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, and Switzerland.
In addition to pharmaceutical companies, Switzerland is home to many companies in the fields of biotechnology or medical devices and technology. According to KPMG, there are 120 life science companies in Basel, 132 in Zürich and 92 in the Lemanic region.
In 2013, 41 life science companies had their international headquarters in Switzerland. In Switzerland, there are about 51,000 workers in the field of medical technologies and 13,700 on the field of biotechnologies.

Hubs

Basel region

According to Le Temps, there are about 900 pharmaceutical and medtech companies in the region of Basel. The region of Zurich, mainly active in medical technologies employs 21,000 workers.

Lemanic region

According to L'Hebdo, there are 750 biotech and medtech companies in the Lemanic region. Among them, 450 companies develop and/or produce drugs. In addition to that, there are 500 laboratories from universities and university hospitals.