Biovian is a CDMO specialising in complex biologics, particularly viral vector production, the microbial production of recombinant proteins, and plasmid DNA.
“We are producing different specially designed and engineered therapeutic proteins, such as binding proteins, fusion proteins, and antibody fragments,” explains CEO Antti Nieminen. “Microbial platforms bring in a little over 50% of our revenues, with the rest coming from other sectors.”
The firm has established itself as a one-stop shop in the complex biologics sector. Of course, the industry is full of companies that describe themselves as “one-stop shops”, but Biovian’s offering is particularly extensive.
The company serves small or medium-sized companies that can benefit from its end-to-end service. Biovian has the capacity to provide vials for clinical trials, meaning that its customers do not need to find another supplier when they reach that stage of development.
“We can start working with clients from early on in the analytics and process development, and move with them onto manufacturing,” Nieminen tells us. “There are a lot of companies working within a similar sphere, but we have a track record that spans 20 years of experience in the complex biologics sector.”
Preserving Expertise
Biovian can harness those 20 years of experience thanks to its high employee retention rate.
“We have an average retention rate of over 95%,” Nieminen tells us. “When people join Biovian they enjoy working here and want to stay. This is a differentiating factor for the company.”
The key to Biovian’s success is its people, and Nieminen will not underestimate the importance of that team. Its people are highly educated, with more than half of the company’s staff boasting an MSc or a PhD level of education.
“We are an expert-level organisation at solving problems,” Nieminen says. “This is especially true of very early-stage programs. They need that flexibility and experience to efficiently work in these early-stage programs.”
This is why Nieminen emphasises the importance of caring for Biovian’s people.
“People are the ones who deliver, they are the ones who know how to do things,” Nieminen tells us. “It’s not the companies that do the work, it’s the people in the company. So, if people leave the company loses that knowledge. That, I think becomes even more important in a very competitive environment.”
“That pool of talent has led Biovian to successfully manufacturing over 500 clinical drug substances and subsequent drug product batches, including cell banks over the last 20 years.”
“We have a track record of very successful collaborations with our clients,” Nieminen tells us. “We are an established company with an excellent company culture, and we have been extremely good at solving clients’ problems.”
Expanding Capacity
Biovian’s experts have the firm’s state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at their disposal. But when we speak to Nieminen, the firm is currently in the process of a €50 million investment in improving and expanding that facility.
The new facility will be 6,400 square metres in size, fitted with cutting-edge equipment and advanced technologies operated in bio-safety level 2 (BSL2) cleanroom. Those technologies will support the development, manufacturing, and testing of advanced therapy medicinal products such as adenoviral and adeno-associated viral therapies (AAVs). It will also have Class A to D cleanroom areas for bulk drug substances and final drug product manufacture.
“The fact is that currently, we are well occupied,” Nieminen says. “Our utilization rate is good, and with the facility expansion we are able to offer more resources and manufacturing opportunities for our existing and new clients.”
Nieminen is developing the capabilities and capacity necessary for a state-of-the-art factory and multipurpose facility that will allow it to produce a range of products, including larger-scale viral vector and microbial protein projects as well as concurrent manufacturing campaigns.
“The facility will allow up to 2,000 litres-scale bioreactors,” Nieminen says. “We are bringing more capacity to the market for new and existing clients progressing with clinical studies. The new facility will also be feasible for commercial manufacturing and fulfill EU and FDA requirements.”
Over 20 years of operation Nieminen has built the company gradually. There have been several different phases in the company’s development. While Biovian has had some years of aggressive growth where its revenue has doubled year-on-year, recently it has been going through a more stable period.
Growing and Evolving
However, that growth has led to its own challenges. Like many companies experiencing rapid growth, Biovian has found it a challenge to preserve the company culture Nieminen places so much importance on.
“When the company grows to a certain point, you need different approaches to when you were a smaller business,” Nieminen explains. “With more people, you need to have a system to organise the company. We have had to develop a way to be a bit different while allowing people to be flexible and follow their own projects.”
Nieminen has continued to oversee modifications to how Biovian is organised as the firm has scaled up, and dealt with the challenges that arise from that, but he already has a clear view of the next business’s next steps.
“Last year we recruited between 40 and 50 more people, but also improved Biovian’s organisational structure by defining roles and responsibilities more quickly to allow us to take our next steps,” he says. “As one of the co-founders of the company I know its whole story and this has been an interesting phase in that story, if a demanding one. We have implemented new IT systems for financial management and projects, as well as manufacturing and laboratory information management systems.”
It is a turbulent time for the industry, which is seeing a great deal of consolidation at the moment. But as a solid development company with a 20-year track record, Biovian has the foundations in place to be in an excellent market position with its excellent, highly experienced team.
“I feel like, especially if you are working with high-quality, well-funded clients and you have a reputation for excellent quality and are run by good teams, the future of more specialised CDMOs is a bright one,” Nieminen says. “We have our three strands of the business to build on. We are not competing with big corporations, but we can carve our own niche by providing high quality, tailor-made, flexible solutions to our clients.”
