Supplier share in the protein market – spotlight
10
Min Read
In this blog:
- We take a look at New England Biolab's protein market share
- And explore how the company has achieved a growth trajectory
Today on our blog we’re going to take a look at the proteins market, with a spotlight on a single supplier that has seen significant changes over the past ten years. Our product manager Rebecca is going to look at the reasons for these changes, and what they tell us about the global protein market.
The full CiteAb protein dataset includes over 61,000 citations for the last ten years, features 82 companies and 362,000 products – and during this time New England Biolabs has seen some notable changes.
The company is very well known for producing and suppling enzymes, especially restriction enzymes, for life science research, as well as providing solutions supporting genome editing, synthetic biology and next-generation sequencing. It also provides free access to research tools such as REBASE, InBASE, and Polbase.
Over the ten year period, New England Biolabs has held an average of 2.53 percent of the total protein market. However, it is on a growth trajectory. Following a citation share decrease of 2.54 percent in 2011 to just 1.47 percent in 2014, the company then saw growth year on year, reaching 4.56 percent in 2020. It is interesting that such a well established company was able to change its trajectory so well.
Rebecca explains: “One potential explanation for New England Biolab’s growth in recent years is the development of the Chinese market for proteins. From our data we can see that there has been an increase in use of New England Biolab’s protein products in China from 1.96 percent of total citations in 2011 to 10.50 percent of citations in 2020. This follows the overall trend in protein use in China, and suggests that this growing market has had an impact not just on New England Biolabs but on the whole protein market.
“We also see New England Biolab’s share of the US market remain strong, despite this market generally decreasing for most companies as China has grown. Despite dropping from 66.67 percent of the company’s citations in 2011, the US market still represents nearly a half of New England Biolab’s citations, equating to 45.83 percent in 2020.”
In the past year, both BioLegend and Promega’s market shares dipped below New England Biolabs for the first time – if this is sustained, New England Biolabs could move up to the top five overall protein suppliers.
Another area we like to consider is the product mix that a company has in its catalogue, and whether this has influenced its success.
Rebecca adds: “Looking at New England Biolab’s products over the past few years, we can see that much of the company’s catalogue has shown a gradual increase in citation share, but one product definitely stands out.
“The company’s Q5® High-Fidelity DNA Polymerase (product code M0491) has done exceptionally well, increasing from being the 44th most highly cited protein in 2019 to the 28th in 2020. This product may be disrupting the DNA polymerase market, as it is said to have the highest fidelity amplification available, 280 times higher than the standard Taq polymerase. The increased amplification rates partnered with low error rates and better performance may well allow this product to compete with legacy products on the market, hence its increasing market share.”
We will continue to keep an eye on our protein market data to see whether New England Biolab’s market share continues to increase. If you would like any further information on our protein data, or have any questions about it, please do contact Rebecca who would be more than happy to help you.
– Rhys and the CiteAb team
