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December 25, 2006

Under the big tent | Maine firms travel to Germany for the biggest biotech show on earth

By Chris Churchill
Dusseldorf is an elegant and fashionable German city on the Rhine River, home to great shopping, museums and the weird but influential synth-band Kraftwerk. The city also hosts MEDICA, an annual get-together recognized as the world's largest and most prestigious medical trade show.

This year, for the first time in several years, the Maine International Trade Center journeyed to MEDICA, leading a delegation that included three companies ˆ— Maine Biotechnology Services of Portland; Trillium Diagnostics of Brewer; and EastCoast Bio of North Berwick ˆ— eager to expose their products to a worldwide audience.

It's tempting to call the show, held in mid-November, mammoth, but that word doesn't do MEDICA justice. We're talking 17 separate halls, each one crammed with product- and service-hawking booths. We're talking companies representing every medical and biotech niche imaginable, from old-school techniques like acupuncture to the most advanced medical discoveries. We're talking 137,000 visitors over a four-day period. We're talking the world of medicine under one very large roof.

The MITC, a nonprofit created to encourage dealing between the state's businesses and the world, shared space with trade groups from New Hampshire and Vermont, together occupying a booth labeled "The Best of New England." By organizing the trip, the trade center provided a way for three companies to make the deals and contacts that can lead to future business. "If you want a high-volume exposure to a lot of medical diagnostic companies from around the world, that's the place to go," says Bruce Davis, president of Trillium Diagnostics.

And in a global economy in which so much high-level medical work is being done in Europe or Asia, those who attended the conference say it's increasingly important that Maine businesses have the kind of international exposure that MEDICA provides.

Founded in 1996, Trillium is a biotech company with four employees. The firm says it provides "diagnostics for clinical cytometry and laboratory hematology." You may not know what that means, but many of the folks at MEDICA did ˆ— and apparently liked what they heard. Davis says he made contacts at the company that should lead to new business. And though the company has not yet inked new deals, Davis says he had conversations at MEDICA with a Dutch company that may distribute Trillium products across Europe.

The cost of doing business
Trillium had not attended MEDICA previously, and Davis says it's unlikely the company would have done so this year without assistance from the Maine International Trade Center. Booth space alone costs several thousand dollars, and companies are responsible for shipping their booth setup to Germany, another costly step to get to MEDICA. But making the trip with the MITC, says Davis, trimmed Trillium's cost of attending the trade show from an estimated $5,000 to less than $1,000.

Making the trip to MEDICA simple and affordable was the point of the center's effort, says Zeynep Turk, a senior trade advisor at MITC who joined the trip to Dusseldorf. And the effort was aimed at boosting the state's burgeoning biotech industry, estimated to include about 80 companies. "The trade center's role was to make it easier, take care of the details and take care of the logistics," Turk says. "It was a real positive experience for the companies, and that's the bottom line."

Maine Biotechnology Services manufactures antibodies. The company, located on Portland's Forest Avenue, already has several clients in Europe that attend MEDICA. "We were able to see all of our European customers in one location," says Carrie Cloutier, sales director at the company. "It benefits us financially because we're not traveling to several locations."

Joseph Chandler, president of Maine Biotechnology Services, had been to MEDICA before, and first journeyed to the show several years ago on another expedition organized by the MITC. Still, despite seeing it before, Chandler again was impressed by the vastness of the conference. "It's like having 20 buildings the size of the Cumberland County Civic Center available to you," he says. "And it's this one time when you can meet face to face with people with whom you may have only talked on the phone."

Chandler, who says he met with several prospective new clients at the conference, predicts he will try to return to MEDICA next year. He would be especially likely to go if the MITC organizes the trip, he says, but would also consider going independently. That's an option taken by at least four Maine companies this year, including Puritan Medical Products Co. of Guilford, Capricorn Products of Portland, BioProcessing Inc. of Portland and BioDesign International of Saco.

Chandler and Turk say those companies, combined with those that attended with the Maine International Trade Center, gave Maine a relatively substantial showing at the conference especially for a state so small and rural. And with many of the non-American attendees at the conference knowing little about Maine, attending MEDICA is a way to put the state's biotech industry on the map. "There's a tremendous value for Maine companies to be there," Chandler says, "and we are there."

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