BioWin has signed a partnership agreement with the Shanghai Biopharmaceutical Industry Association. EXPO Shanghai (China), 25 June 2010 – BioWin, the Health Competitiveness Cluster of Wallonia, today signed a partnership agreement with the Shanghai Biopharmaceutical Industry Association (SBIA). The aim of this agreement, concluded for an initial period of 2 years, is:
* to promote business-to-business relations between BioWin members and the SBIA
* to facilitate access to the Chinese market for Walloon SMEs
* to facilitate access to Wallonia for Chinese companies
* to promote inter-university exchanges between, on the one hand, French-speaking Belgian doctoral students and post-doctoral students and, on the other hand, their Chinese counterparts, inter alia in the framework of the agreement signed in 2006 between the China Scholarship Council, the FNRS and the French Community of Belgium
This “BioWin-SBIA” agreement was signed under the auspices of Mr Jean-Claude Marcourt, Vice-President and Minister for the Economy, SMEs, Foreign Trade and New Technologies of the Walloon Regional Government, and M. Guoqing Fu, Director of the International Programs department, Shanghai Science & Technology Commision, during the Walloon Day at the Belgian Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010.
Founded in 2002, the Shanghai Biopharmaceutical Industry Association (SBIA) is a not-for-profit trade association which officially represents Shanghai’s biopharmaceutical companies and research institutes. The SBIA currently has more than 200 members, private and public sector organisations, which are mainly active in health related fields of biopharmacy, diagnostics, innovative chemicals and biotechnology. Modern biotechnology and medicine are high technological sectors that the city of Shanghai wants to promote over the coming years. With 6 science parks dedicated to biomedical science, Shanghai is already one of the major world platforms in the development of biotechnology innovation in the area of health.
BioWin, the health competiveness cluster, was set up in July 2006. The cluster has 260 members (large & small companies, research centres and universities). Focused on the development of innovative SMEs, BioWin’s ambition is to bring together all the Walloon stakeholders committed to promoting innovation and training in the field of biotechnology in health care. Its objectives are to create a new culture of openness and partnership favourable to innovation in Wallonia, to train, attract and retain in Wallonia a human capital of excellence, to contribute to the emergence of technological platforms and collective infrastructures and to promote internationally the strengths of Wallonia in the area of Health biotechnology and medical technologies (biopharmacy, diagnostics, medical systems and equipment, biotechnology products, clinical research, production and biologistics).
The complementary profiles of the new partners, BioWin and SBIA, augur well for the development of numerous synergies between their members.
Press contacts: Frédéric Druck – BioWin’s Director of Communication and International Relations
Tel.: +32 (0)474/52.02.69 – frederic.druck@biowin.org
Sbia contact: Luyun – SBIA’s assistant to general manager
Tel: +86 21 50803610 – sbia@sbia.org.cn