BD grows business in ASEAN with new facility

Published on 09.09.2014

GLOBAL medical technology company Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) has unveiled a new facility that is an extension of its plant in Tuas. The new annex building, officially opened yesterday, will house various functions across the product development cycle, including research and development, process design and manufacturing.

“With this new facility, we have not only increased our manufacturing capacity, but also consolidated key innovation functions… under one roof,” said Mr James Lim, president of BD Greater Asia. This will encourage a “cross-fertilisation of ideas and increase effectiveness”, while allowing BD to “commercialise new products with a competitive advantage”, he added.

BD’s manufacturing capabilities in Singapore have expanded from producing needles and syringes when it started out 25 years ago to various medical solutions today, such as blood-collection devices for diagnosis and treatment monitoring, as well as diabetes care products.

More than half of its products are being manufactured outside Asia, but BD hopes to build up the Asian percentage strongly over the next 10 years.

The company, whose regional business has grown from less than US$100 million in annual revenue in 1989 to about US$1.5 billion (S$1.9 billion) today, is also behind the development of innovations such as the Odon device.

This is an obstetrical instrument that assists in the delivery of newborn babies during difficult labour and DB hopes to roll it out in the next three to five years.

Mr Yeoh Keat Chuan, managing director of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), a long-term partner to BD, said that Singapore will support the growing medical technology industry here by providing opportunities for companies to co-develop and test-bed solutions with health-care clusters.

“We have a population that is ageing quite rapidly – one in 12 people is over 60 years old right now, but, by 2030, it will be one in six – so we want to ensure that as our population ages, we have solutions that meet our needs,” he said. “The idea here is to have Singapore as a living laboratory to test out some of these solutions, which (companies) can then export.”

Sectors: Healthcare & Medical
Countries: Singapore
Export Action Plan