Catalan biomedical companies attracted €106 million in investment in 2018

Biomedical companies in Catalonia raised a joint total of €106 million in investment in 53 operations, up 1.9% from 2017, according to the Study on investment in the Biomedical industry in Catalonia by CataloniaBio & HealthTech and EY, presented in Barcelona. Investments of more than €10 million made up 6% of all transactions.

While venture capital is still the main player, business angels are playing an increasingly significant role. In terms of geographic breakdown, 80% of all shareholders in Catalan biomedical companies are located in Catalonia, 13% are foreign and 7% from the rest of Spain. Investors consider the growth in number of international funds looking to invest incompanies to be the greatest success of the Catalan ecosystem.

It is worth noting the pipeline of new drugs, technology and medical devices in Catalonia over the past year, which is progressively moving into the more advanced stages of the innovation process: specifically, 40% of R&D projects conducted by Catalan pharmaceutical companies are now in the final stages of the process, a figure that is 14% higher, quantitatively, than in 2017 and, qualitatively, shows that this industry is experiencing sustained growth and bringing new medical solutions to the market. In the case of medtech, half of all products are awaiting regulatory authorisation or are already on the market (27%).

In 2018, biomedical companies signed 355 collaboration projects with other organisations and research and technology centres in the ecosystem. These will give rise to future innovations that will help make the sector more competitive internationally, providing more transversal medical solutions (drug-technology-digital) for unmet medical needs or to improve on current solutions.

Catalonia currently has 8 investment funds that specialise in health and biomedicine. The Catalan companies in the sector carried out a total of 50 investment operations in 2018, with €9 million in committed capital and €29 million in capital paid out.

Source: CataloniaBio & HealthTech