West expands presence in South Korea, India

SEOUL, South Korea—West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. is expanding its presence in two markets globally with new offices, one in South Korea and the other in India.

The company's expansion in South Korea comes as a result of an acquisition of the distribution business of GIS Korea Ltd., a privately owned medical device and health care product distributor in the regional market, according to Karen Flynn, West's chief operations officer.

West has partnered with GIS as a distributor since 2003, and brought the office with about 15 employees into the fold to build its regional presence, Flynn said. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

"We made a decision that we wanted to actually acquire the distributor so that West would have a direct presence with the customers in South Korea, because that market is so important," she said. "The (South) Korean market is growing pretty rapidly in regards to biopharmaceutical manufacturing."

West wants to be close to customers and provide technical consultation, building its presence in terms of participating in professional organizations and talking directly with regulatory bodies in the markets the company serves, she said.

"We felt we could best do that by having a direct presence in the market," Flynn said.

The office's scope covers South Korea right now, and West has other offices throughout Asia, Flynn said. The South Korean market has been growing quickly, faster than the average West business, which is in the 6-8 percent corridor. With its location in Southeast Asia, it is a very attractive market for West, and the acquisition of GIS will give the company even more prospects in the region. West also has offices in Singapore, China, India and Australia, and partners with Daikyo Seiko Ltd. for presence in Japan.

"Although we worked with a distributor there obviously for a long time and have tremendous respect for the people and their abilities, hence the acquisition, we feel like we can uncover even more value and opportunity for growth," Flynn said.

The location also provides some warehousing for West, and had done so even before the acquisition, Flynn said. West will be investing in the facility and employees at the Seoul facility "in accordance with the market needs," she said.

"Anticipating that this opportunity for West is going to deliver the value that justified the acquisition, we will be adding additional resources," she said. "I think right now, our focus will be on building out our technical service and scientific affairs capabilities to supplement the sales and distribution capabilities that we have there locally."

Though the company will be adding some employees, "it's not going to be material to West overall," Flynn said. The company employs about 8,000 worldwide.

"It's important for West because we want to have a direct presence. We go direct in most of the major countries in the world," Flynn said. "We do use some distributors in some of the smaller regions in which we operate. In terms of overall impact for West's business, it's still relatively small."

West also officially opened a new digital technology center in Bengaluru, India. The 17,000-sq.-ft. location is near Bangalore, India, and will serve as a global center of excellence for the company's digital and transformation team, alongside teams based in Exton, Pa., and Eschweiler, Germany, the company said.

"In this particular region of the world, there's quite an investment in terms of digital assets and skills. West is building out our digital strategy with regard to several aspects of our business," Flynn said.

Some of those include developing the company's internal infrastructure through SAP HANA, an enterprise resource planning system, and building better tools to improve internal efficiency, Flynn said.

West also has an interest in how its customers want to work with the company in digital spaces, so the company is creating offerings around E-commerce and engagement through digital marketing tools, as well as increased attention to digital incorporation into medical devices, she said.

"Building that capability as well as into the proprietary products that West offers, we wanted to tap into this skill set in this region of the world, and build a digital technology center there that would enable us to bring all these different aspects of our digital strategy to life," Flynn said.

West has about 100 employees for the site already, and the company will continue to add additional skills to the team throughout 2020, Flynn said.

"It's a fairly large size, and we'll be able to fit a lot of people in there," she said. "You can get a sense, we do anticipate a pretty significant investment in people there."

Digital capabilities

The presence in India will bring a concentration of skills that work hand-in-hand with West's offices in Exton and Eschweiler to build out the company's offerings and capabilities in the digital space. Flynn said the market is shifting to require a core capability in supporting a company's digital platform, and West wants to have that capability internally. This means West won't have to rely on consultants and external partners only.

Working from an internal position allows West to "touch all three pillars," Flynn said. It gives it the ability to find new ways for internal employees to work effectively and efficiently. It touches customer experience in providing new ways to continually enhance that going forward. And it gives West the capability to work around Internet connectivity and product enhancement in the way that consumers are working with devices in daily life.

"When it comes to health care that we see every day, there's more and more advancement around things like diabetes patients being able to monitor their glucose levels and deliver insulin," Flynn said. "There's a lot of interest across many, many therapies, and helping patients to monitor their health. Because we do manufacture our own proprietary devices, we want to be sure that we understand what our pharmaceutical company customers are needing in terms of digital assets and then ultimately what the patients are going to value."

Included in those digital efforts is the company's knowledge center, launched last year to provide technical information for customers, Flynn said. It has different levels of access for customers, covering various West products and capabilities, but also the larger ecosystem of injectable containment and delivery systems. The company encourages consumers to go to the knowledge center to learn what they need to about the best practices for packaging and containment.

West also built an E-commerce capability at the end of last year, which is being built up by the company, Flynn said. There, customers can go online and learn about the systems they need to identify the most appropriate containment and delivery systems, and place orders for samples of those products.

The Bengaluru office will be West's third in India. It started its presence there with a sales office in Hyderabad, and followed with a manufacturing plant in Sri City in 2014, Flynn said.