Up to 32,000 French pharma jobs under threat, says study

Up to 32,000 industry jobs could be axed in France over the next few years, according to a study commissioned by Leem, the French pharmaceutical industry body.

The Arthur D. Little study names five major factors threatening the pharmaceutical model: pricing pressures; generics; changing areas of growth, the break up of the traditional value chain as a result of the rise of biotechnology; and the internationalisation of competition.

It uses two possible models to forecast pharma sector employment in 2015: the "status quo" scenario where not much will change on the part of the pharma companies or the public authorities; and the "proactive" scenario in which the players adopt a forward-looking strategy.

Including main subcontractors, the difference in headcount between the two scenarios comes to 22,000. The term "main subcontractors" covers direct subcontractors, contract research organisations and sales force.

Sector employment would fall by 28% from 115,000 to 83,000 over the 10 years from 2005 to 2015, according to the status quo approach, i.e. 32,000 jobs would disappear. According to the proactive approach, sector employment would fall 8% to 105,000, corresponding to a loss of 10,000 jobs.

With the status quo approach, productivity gains would compress the workforce by 30%. However, with a proactive approach relying on measures in favour of bioproduction, with industrial fabric concentrating on vaccines, the workforce would still shrink by 22%.

The sales workforce would be cut by 38% in the first scenario and by 25% in the proactive scenario.

The study recommends making France more attractive in research terms by boosting the number and quality of researchers and by improving training. However, these measures all require time.

Where production is concerned, the study advocates keeping up the traditional small chemical molecule production sites, through management of product life cycles in the existing sites and support to subcontractors. The bioproduction axis should be encouraged, since it is led by French expertise in the field of vaccines.

The study also recommends a "cluster" approach with the setting up of hubs for medicinal product production in the Seine and Loire river valleys and in the Drouais region (Centre). Vaccines and biologicals should be produced in the Rhone valley and part of the Auvergne, with the Genzyme and Sanofi Pasteur (Sanofi-Aventis group) sites at the centre of this production hub.

Another cluster should concentrate on producing biologicals in Alsace and border areas, with the Lilly site at Fegersheim and the BioValley competitiveness hub representing the core of the cluster.