Vita 34 AG is the pioneer of stem cell banking in Europe. In addition to its core business of umbilical cord blood banking, the Company aims to enter new markets in future and thus to become the European market leader in cell banking. The Management Board has identified the following four core building blocks to achieve this strategic objective and the associated growth:
New Research and Development Areas
Through targeted research and development of marketable products and services, Vita 34 is transforming itself from a pure stem cell bank to a more broadly-based cell bank that is able to supply the best available patient’s own cells for current and future cell therapies. For this purpose, Vita 34 is following a clearly focused innovation strategy by developing new products and services based for the cryo-preservation of stem cells or other cell sources in the future. To this end, the Company cooperates with selected renowned research institutions and universities and creates quality standards for later medical use with the storage of various cell materials. In this way, Vita 34 is opening up the potential to benefit in the future from the growing demand for cryo-preserved cell material for personalized use in regenerative medicine or cell therapies. In addition, the value chain is to be expanded by products and services for the pharmaceutical industry or government organizations. Currently, the cryo-preservation of immune cells from peripheral blood and umbilical cord blood is being prepared.
In all research and development activities, projects are selected in a targeted manner to an economically reasonable extent that are oriented to market trends, and have an adequate risk profile in the partnerships. In addition to its current core business, Vita 34 is continuously evaluating the demand for new products in the regenerative medicine sector (storage of adipose tissue as a basis for mesenchymal stem cells and adipocytes) and for cell therapies (storage of T-cells, natural killer (NK) cells, and dendritic cells). The objective is to participate in the progress of further developments in the field of regenerative stem cell medicine and various immuno-oncological cell therapies in the medium and long term.
Expansion of the Core Business
Vita 34 traditionally focuses on organic growth as part of its corporate strategy. In recent years, internationalization has been successfully driven forward, as the current presence with subsidiaries and sales partners in more than 20 countries clearly demonstrates. In the future, the Company plans to continuously increase market penetration in the high-margin core market of the DACH region. At the same time, the market presence in domestic and foreign markets is to be generally stabilized and expanded. To this end, Vita 34 has a comprehensive product portfolio within the umbilical cord blood and umbilical cord tissue storage sector. The aim is to continuously broaden the product range for stem cell deposits through active portfolio and lifecycle management.
Inorganic Growth
The growth strategy is also focused on vertical and horizontal acquisitions in Europe that strategically strengthen the market position according to clearly defined criteria and provide additional synergy benefits, in particular in marketing and sales as well as in manufacturing and management areas. The vertical portfolio expansion strategy includes opportunistic acquisitions along the value chain or of companies with complementary product ranges. The horizontal market expansion is focused on selective entry into specific European markets.
Increasing Cost Efficiency
Vita 34 examines all activities on an ongoing basis to assess their contribution to the Group’s current and future profitability. This has already led to significant successes in 2018 with the realignment of research and development and sales activities, and with the restructuring of the Danish subsidiary. In order to maintain the profitable growth on a sustainable basis the Management Board will continue to examine further opportunities to increase cost efficiency.