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Report: KC animal health resources lead the pack Kansas City Business Journal Region's focus 'even further validated' by study An animal health consultant's report is expected to help turn one of the Kansas City region's best-kept secrets into one of its most powerful economic development tools. The secret: The corridor between Columbia, Mo., and Manhattan, Kan., is home to the largest single concentration of animal health interests in the world. That statement and supporting statistics are contained in a report by Dallas-based Brakke Consulting Inc., a leading authority on the global animal health industry. The report was commissioned by an economic development consortium promoting the corridor in an attempt to attract more animal health and nutrition companies, jobs and research dollars to the region. It was to be released during an Aug. 17 gathering at the American Royal complex -- a symbol of a cow town past that hasn't been touted so loudly in decades. Now, the Brakke report states, "KC is the only U.S. region investing specifically in attracting animal health companies." The North American headquarters of Bayer HealthCare LLC's Animal Health Division in Shawnee seeded the effort in February with a $300,000 gift that was split among the animal health initiative's three organizing bodies -- the Kansas City Area Development Council (KCADC), the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute Inc. (KCALSI). "Now, with the Brakke report, we've even further validated that," Duncan said, "and we have really solid numbers of what's really here." Lynn Parman, the KCADC's vice president of life sciences and technology, said the roughly 50 animal health company officials set to be on hand for the presentation of the report are expected to become ambassadors for the new animal health initiative. "This is the first time the region's entire animal health industry has been brought together," Parman said of the Aug. 17 event. "We need the companies who are already here to be our ambassadors, our ground forces. We need them to help tell the story of the animal health industry in Kansas City." "Right now, we are working with 13 bioscience-related projects that are in various stages of activity," Parman said, "and I would say almost half of those are animal health projects." Parman couldn't quantify the economic impact anticipated from the animal health recruitment effort. However, a brochure recently released by the KCADC hints at the huge potential of a regional branding and marketing effort like the new KC Animal Health Corridor campaign. Since the launch of the KCADC's OneKC regional economic development campaign and ThinkKC national campaign in April 2004, the agency and its partners have helped attract more than 5,000 new jobs, $191 million in additional payroll and $415 million in new capital investment to the region, the brochure states. In addition to being good for the community, the animal health initiative will be beneficial to the industry, said Joerg Ohle, president of Bayer HealthCare's Animal Health Division and chairman of the advisory board leading the initiative. "If I bring more animal health companies here, if I bring more research here, if I bring more wealth here, it's easier for me to do business," Ohle said. Specifically, he said, the effort will produce a larger supporting cast, including additional contract research organizations specializing in various facets of animal vaccine and drug development. It also will boost the level of university research that companies such as Bayer can turn into new products, Ohle said, and increase the skilled labor pool for those companies. Bayer's Animal Health Division, which manufactures products for companion and food animals, employs about 500 in Shawnee, including a 38-member research and development team. (Actually, Intervet's U.S. headquarters is in Millsboro, Del., though it has regional research, production and administrative facilities in De Soto.) Pfizer Animal Health, which is No. 1 with $2.2 billion in 2005 revenue, has its headquarters in New York. "Depending on how you slice it and dice it, there may actually be more dollar volume out of the companies in the New Jersey-New York area, mainly because Pfizer and a bunch of feed additive companies are there," Brakke said. But no one has more animal health assets than the Kansas City region, he said. "The Kansas City area's proximity to four accredited veterinary colleges offers animal health companies unprecedented access to trained professionals and cutting-edge veterinary research," Brakke said. "The area (also) offers unequaled proximity to the animal health industry's end users, particularly food animals." |
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