SINGAPORE -- U.S. biotechnology unicorn 10x Genomics opened its Asia-Pacific headquarters and first overseas manufacturing facility in Singapore on Monday as the company aims to expand its presence in China and other regional markets.
The Nasdaq-listed company, which has a market capitalization of over $15 billion, designs and makes gene sequencing technology for scientific research, including products that have been used to support work in treating COVID-19. 10x sells both the machines and the software needed for analyzing biological systems.
The investment comes as the Singaporean government makes a concerted push to draw life sciences companies to its shores, a push that began even before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2019, the city-state started a program called Tech@SG to help high-potential tech companies, including those in biotech and medtech, grow in Singapore and expand in the region.
"The company is really defined by the quality of the people you have, and Singapore has some of the best talent in the world," Serge Saxonov, co-founder and CEO of 10x, told Nikkei. "It also has a great... biotech-friendly climate. The government is very supportive and it works."
10x did not disclose the amount of its investment, but said it aims to scale up its operations and build a more robust supply chain to better serve international customers.
Singapore is known for its stringent immigration procedures aimed at controlling the influx of foreigners seeking employment in the country. The Tech@SG scheme helps qualifying tech companies set up new teams in Singapore by easing the requirements for work visas granted to overseas applicants.
"The life sciences sector is an important pillar of our health care industry and has a promising growth trajectory," said Goh Wan Yee, senior vice president and head of health care at the Singapore Economic Development Board, the city-state's agency tasked with attracting foreign investment.
"The Economic Development Board remains committed to supporting innovation and manufacturing activities in this sector, which will create good jobs and business opportunities in Singapore," she added.
The country has plans to grow its manufacturing industry by 50% by 2030, with tech players like 10x expected to play a role in adding value to the sector.
Singapore's economic planners also hope foreign companies that set up in the city-state will be able to impart skills and know-how to the local workforce as they tap the country as a hub for production.
10x said its products have been adopted by researchers around the world, including top global pharmaceutical companies. Its CEO told Nikkei that his company's customers include COVID vaccine makers Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
It is not the only biotech company setting up shop in Singapore. In May, German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, which with Pfizer has made one of the world's most-used COVID inoculation shots, announced plans to set up a vaccine manufacturing facility in Singapore as early as 2023 to meet future demand in Southeast Asia.
BioNTech earmarked "hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars" for the new facility, which it said would produce a range of messenger-RNA vaccines and therapeutics for infectious diseases as well as cancer.
Exports of Singapore's pharmaceutical products have grown since the pandemic. The city-state's Changi Airport has also played a role as a regional distribution hub for COVID vaccines by building up its cold-storage capacity.
10x Genomics' Chromium Controller is a piece of biotech used to understand COVID-19 at the cellular level. (Photo courtesy of 10x Genomics) One of 10x's products is the Chromium Controller, which researchers use for understanding COVID-19 at the cellular level.
10x's Saxonov said its Singapore location, besides serving as a manufacturing site, will also serve as the company's commercial hub for the Asia-Pacific region.
"We do expect to kind of go deeper and deeper into all the countries where we are now," he said, including China, the region's biggest market.
"Japan is a big one, South Korea is a big one, but also Australia [and] Singapore," the CEO said. "We've actually started more recently with a presence in India with customers there and I think that... we expect to grow substantially."
10x's Singapore hub occupies more than 53,000 sq. feet, and has state-of-the art, automated production suites for reagent manufacturing and a fully equipped lab for training customers and partners on its single-cell and spatial technologies.
The company said the Asia-Pacific region represented 25% of its global sales in the first half of this year.
Biotech firms have taken the spotlight as the pandemic dragged on, with the scientific community on the lookout for better treatments and methods to overcome COVID.
"Especially in the conditions now, of the pandemic, that has reinforced the importance of investing in biomedical research," Saxonov said. "We have been focused on the research market, but our tools, ultimately, we see them making a big impact in the clinical setting."