Thursday, 25 June 2015 15:22

NZ surges up global biotech rankings

Written by 

New Zealand has been ranked #3 in the recently released Scientific American World View Scorecard, which measures the biotech innovation potential of 54 countries. 

Using seven categories including productivity, IP protection, intensity, enterprise support, education/workforce, foundations and policy and stability, the study benchmarks each countries’ potential on an annual basis.

New Zealand has surged in the rankings from #18 in 2011 to #3 in 2015. Dr Will Barker, CEO of NZBIO says its members have always maintained New Zealand is a great place to grow bio-based businesses.

“It is fantastic to be recognised in such a prestigious international study," Barker says.

“Taking top spot in several subcategories, including 'most life science PhD's per capita' and 'best political stability' is great. However, there is room in NZ for significant improvement in both public and private R&D spending and investment, which is very low compared with the other top 10 countries.”

Commenting on the comparative strength in the Enterprise Support and Policy and Stability categories, Baker adds, “These results clearly show the infrastructure for supporting New Zealand’s growing bioeconomy is evolving nicely.  However, while the study uses wide ranging data to measure potential it fails to examine local legislative challenges such as our HSNO Act, which affects a large portion of our biotech companies.”

More like this

Featured

Big return on a small investment

Managing director of Woolover Ltd, David Brown, has put a lot of effort into verifying what seems intuitive, that keeping newborn stock's core temperature stable pays dividends by helping them realise their full genetic potential.

Editorial: Sensible move

OPINION: The Government's decision to rule out changes to Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) that would cost every farmer thousands of dollars annually, is sensible.

National

Machinery & Products

» Latest Print Issues Online

The Hound

Overbearing?

OPINION: Dust ups between rural media and PR types aren't unheard of but also aren't common, given part of the…

Foot-in-mouth

OPINION: The Hound hears from his canine pals in Southland that an individual's derogatory remarks on social media have left…

» Connect with Rural News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter