Catalan biotech Mind the Byte enters Japanese market; €1.2 million annual turnover expected by 2020

Barcelona (CNA) .- The Catalan company Mind the Byte, devoted to computational drug design, has signed a distribution agreement with a Japanese company to enter the bioinformatics market in Japan. The company expects an annual turnover of €1.2 million by 2020 in this country, a market in which until now it has had no commercial presence. The contacts between Mind the Byte and the Japanese company Filgen began during a mission of the public business competitiveness and internationalisation agency ACCIÓ in Japan in 2015. According to the founder and CEO of the Catalan company, Alfons Nonell-Canals, Japan is a “very large and mature market in the field of biotechnology". "We are small and we are in a phase of development but it is a key country", said Nonell-Canals, who also stated that the overall bioinformatics market in Japan is "expected to grow 21% by 2020".

Founded in 2011 and based in Barcelona Science Park, Mind the Byte has a team of 15 employees and the support of the Danish organisation Copenhagen Capacity. Indeed, the company has formalised its entry into Japan this week under the framework of BioJapan, the biotechnology fair held in Yokohama, eastern Japan, considered the largest event in Asia in this sector. "It's the third time we’ve travelled to Japan, and the interviews we've had this week prove that perseverance and trust are key, because they have nothing to do with the first approach done a year and a half ago", said Nonell-Canals.

Mind the Byte has participated in this event through a stand from ACTION and Biocat, which also welcomed other Catalan companies such as Rubió, Salvat, Leukos Biotech, Ability Pharma, Thrombotargets and ZeClinics. It is estimated that the 19^th edition of BioJapan was attended by 15,000 professionals, business executives and scientists, who held more than 8,000 business meetings. Taking advantage of their presence in Japan, Catalan companies also travelled to the region of Osaka, which is one of the main hubs of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in the region. The aim of the trade mission was to assist Catalan companies to initiate or consolidate their presence in Japan, the second-biggest pharmaceutical market in the world and the leader in biotech imports.

In fact, according to the Biocat Report 2015, Japan appears as one of the top ten priority markets for Catalan companies in life sciences and health, along with the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Brazil and China.