and Lonza of Switzerland; in the Eastern hemisphere Nicholas Piramal of India (through the acquisition of a former Avecia operation) and the joint ventures between AutekBio and Beijing E-Town Harvest International in China and between Biocon in India and Celltrion in South Korea. Same customer category: life science, especially the pharmaceutical industry. Similar business types: custom manufacturing of proprietary drugs; opportunities for generic versions, called biosimilars. Similar regulatory environment: FDA regulations, especially GMP. Existing infrastructure (utilities, etc.) can be used. Cons: High entry barriers because of demanding technology. The construction of a large-scale plant for the production of biopharmaceuticals by cell culture fermentation costs around $500 million and takes four to six years. As the specifications of the plant and process types for biopharmaceuticals differ substantially from traditional chemical synthesis, they cannot be produced in conventional multipurpose fine chemical plants. High financial exposure: (1) high capital intensity ('massive investments are needed at a time when chances of success are still very low' and (2) risk of batch failures (contamination). Unlike the biopharmaceutical start-ups, the emerging big biopharmaceutical companies are adopting the same opportunistic outsourcing policy as larger pharmaceutical companies. Thus, Amgen, Biogen Idec, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson (J&J), Medimmune, Novartis, Roche/Genentech and Pfizer are investing heavily in in-house manufacturing capacity. With three plants in the US, two in Japan and one each in Germany and Switzerland, Roche has the largest production capacity. New developments in expression systems for mammalian and plant cell technology could reduce capacity requirements substantially. Actually, the titer in large-scale mammalian production, actually 2–3 grams/liter. is expected to double to 5–7 by 2015 and once more to 10 by 2020. Furthermore, the widespread application of 'single-use disposable bioprocessing technology', considered by experts as 'the hottest buzz in town'. It advantageously substitutes for stainless steel production trains, at least for short production campaigns. New transgenic production systems are emerging. They (e.g. transgenic moss, lemna, fungal or yeast expression systems, transgenic animals and plants, such as tobacco plants possess the potential to become economically and industrially successful. Legislation and regulation of biotechnology is not well defined yet and leads to differences in interpretation and other uncertainties. In the US, legislation is not yet in place for biosimilars, the generic counterpart of generics in small molecule pharmaceuticals. The inherent risks of the mammalian cell technology led several companies to opt out of mammalian cell technology or to substantially reduce