Around 500 companies in the life sciences, including 118 core biotechnology firms, are located in North Rhine-Westphalia. The economic focal points, in addition to the Rhineland (Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf) and the Ruhrgebiet (from Duisburg to Dortmund), include the regions of Aachen-Jülich, Münster, and East Westphalia (Bielefeld). This illustrates the multicentric character of the biotechnology landscape of North Rhine-Westphalia, with its regionally specific strengths.

These strong economic locations are also the center of the most dense college network in Europe, which is located in NRW. Both application-specific and fundamental research and instruction in the life sciences are international successful at 56 universities, technical colleges, and research institutions in NRW.

Biotechnology is of immense importance to the overall economy of our society, because biotechnological products and methods are the basis for industrial production in many industries.  One example of this is the chemical industry, which uses countless biotechnological processes to save energy and raw materials and to be able to use renewable resources. The pharmaceutical industry is also largely directly dependent on biotechnological processes. Biofuels from plant wastes, detergents, adhesives, bioplastics, paper, medications, diagnostic and analytical methods, nutritional supplements, and seeds are just a few examples of products that could no longer be economically and ecologically developed and produced without biotechnology.

Sales in these industries are several billion euros worldwide, and while many individual products from the various industries can be clearly classified as biotechnology, the sales resulting from them generally are not. But these examples show that the actual influence of biotechnology on all industrial sectors cannot be overstated.