Facts and figures on Sweden's number one life science region 2014
Executive summary
Data from 2012
The Stockholm-Uppsala region, defined as the three counties of Uppsala, Stockholm and Sörmland is one of the largest life science clusters in Europe. Based on official sources on limited public companies (2012), the region is home to 611 companies with a total of 20,852 employees. About 13,500 employees (65%) work for companies active in Research, Development and/or Production, while Marketing & Sales companies employ 29% of the workforce. Six percent of the work force is active in the consulting sector. The workforce is distributed between subsectors as follows: Pharmaceutical 10,982 (53%), Medical technology 4,971 (24%), Biotech tools & supply 2,535 (12%), Consulting (CRO and other services) 1,187 (6%), and Diagnostics 1,108 (5%), Other biotechnology (Environmental, food-related and agricultural) accounts for less than 1%.
There are 12 companies (2 % of companies) with more than 250 employees who collectively account for 49% of the workforce. 54 companies with 51-250 employees (9% of the companies) account for 28%, 144 companies with 11-50 employees (24% of the companies) employ 16% of the workforce and the remaining 390 companies (65% of the company population) with 1-10 employees account for 7% of the workforce.
The three largest companies, AstraZeneca with 3,943 employees, GE Healthcare (1,232) and Fresenius Kabi (1,008), together account for 30% of the workforce.
Seven of the ten largest companies have a Pharmacia heritage (the different divisions of Pharmacia were acquired or merged with other companies in the late 1990s and early 2000) in one way or another. This heritage is reflected in the different profiles of the three counties, Uppsala, Stockholm and Sörmland. The most noticeable differences between the counties include a high proportion of employees in the pharmaceutical sub-sector in Stockholm (60% - of which AstraZeneca contributes 25%) and in Sörmland (91% - almost entirely due to Pfizer’s biopharmaceutical production facility), while the respective contributions from the Biotech tools & supply and Diagnostics sub-sectors are relatively higher in Uppsala.
Reflecting global trends, there has been a continuous decline in recent years in employment, particularly in the pharmaceutical subsector. However, this decrease now appears to be levelling off and there are signs of consistent growth in a number of life science companies across all subsections, including Fresenius Kabi, Oasmia Pharmaceuticals, Atlas Antibodies, Bactiguard, Cepheid and Olink. Interestingly, in a sub-population of 350 companies with less than 50 employees at some point during 2007 - 2012 and engaged in R&D and manufacturing (M&S companies were excluded), the workforce showed a steady increase year on year, amounting to 32% from 2007 to 2012. Even though this sub- population represents only 20% of the total workforce within R&D and manufacturing, the figures illustrate that there is a population of small companies growing in the region. Furthermore, ambitious future plans backed by all stakeholders are underway, including major public-private investments in research funding, research and physical infrastructure totaling over 60 billion SEK (9 billion US dollars). These investments aim at securing favorable conditions for the life science sector and supporting existing companies, and also to stimulating a new generation of companies, thus ensuring that the region remains a world class life sciences cluster.