"Is there a future for production in Sweden?"

Is Sweden finished as a producing nation? No, I don't think so. I have a passion for production in Sweden and want to explain why. 

Firstly, some brief words about the business for which I am currently responsible. 

Kemwell AB is a contract manufacturer of pharmaceuticals in Uppsala, Sweden. Contract manufacturing means that we hold the manufacturing license for a product while our customer holds the marketing license. Kemwell manufactures nearly one billion tablets and suppositories per year and we take charge of the whole process from active ingredient (API) to approved and released product. We also deliver worldwide on behalf of our customers. Kemwell has had an Indian owner since 2006 and the relationship Sweden-India is used frequently to share both skills and services between us. 

At election time, we are hearing a lot of talk about unemployment and how many millions will be spent to reduce it. It's easy to say that spending millions will reduce unemployment. But there must be jobs available too! We need to create more jobs in Sweden and production creates many jobs. So I strongly believe that we must not only keep production in Sweden, but develop it as well. 

Real life is not quite that simple, however! We also need to be competitive in our production, and by competitive I don't mean just in monetary terms. Other important aspects of competitiveness include the environment, innovation, efficiency, quality, a social stability, infrastructure, etc. The list can certainly be made longer. When factoring in all these aspects, I believe that we can produce in Sweden at a competitive cost. 

In the pharmaceutical industry today, we are witnessing a trend to not see production as a core business. As a result, many companies want to outsource their production. And this is precisely why Kemwell exists! 

Kemwell's base is a manufacturing plant that Pfizer chose to sell in 2006. India and China are the major beneficiaries of the outsourcing taking place there today. However, we are also seeing a change in attitude in which pharmaceutical companies want their production closer to the markets in Europe, and are therefore searching for European manufacturers like Kemwell. 

About 20 years ago, much engineering manufacturing was outsourced to Asia, but even there we can see an obvious trend where these same companies are now evaluating 'back-sourcing' their production to Europe and Sweden, primarily because the price is competitive if all aspects of the production cost are taken into account.  

Pharmaceutical production is not easy to move, so when companies decide to outsource they are looking for long-term relationships with their sub-supplier. Since Sweden is such a stable country on many levels, I am convinced that there is a future for production in Sweden, and in the rest of Europe as well. We should probably not focus on products with very low margins, but rather choose production that is more demanding, as in the Life Science industry in general and the highly-regulated pharmaceutical industry in particular. 

Let's work together to create a secure future for this most important of business sectors. 

More investment and development in Swedish production! 

For more information please contact Agneta Bergvall at agneta.bergvall@kemwell.se