The delegation was built around the Nordic Future Health Pavilion, a shared Nordic stand at BIOHK2026, held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on 9–12 September. It was organised and delivered by LucyJRobertshaw AB in partnership with the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce in Sweden.
The convention bills itself as Asia’s largest biotech event, with around 10,000 attendees and delegations from more than 40 countries. Around the pavilion the Nordic group ran a programme of its own, from the West Meets East Forum and company presentations to curated investor and partner introductions, a Life & Health Festival, and a follow-on visit to Shenzhen and Guangzhou in the wider Greater Bay Area.
Interest in the region has grown quickly. The first delegation of five companies travelled to Hong Kong in December 2025. This time the group had grown to around two dozen delegates from several Nordic companies, alongside organisations including AstraZeneca, the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and Sweden’s consulate general.
A gateway to Asian capital and markets
The visit speaks to a question BioStock also explored at Swiss Nordic Bio in Zurich, where Nordic biotech leaders argued that strong science is no longer enough to attract international capital. Several pointed to commercial focus, international ambition and the capital to scale as what the region still lacks, and one called Europe’s ecosystem severely short of capital. Read more here.
Hong Kong, pitched as a gateway to Asian capital and the Greater Bay Area, is one place where some Nordic companies are now testing whether that gap can be filled.
Under the Hong Kong and Macao Medicine and Medical Device Connect, designated hospitals across the Greater Bay Area can use drugs and devices already registered in Hong Kong before they clear China’s national regulator, the NMPA. For a Nordic company, that can be a faster route to patients and to real-world data while full China approval is still some way off.
BioStock put its questions to Lucy Robertshaw, founder of LucyJRobertshaw AB and a board member of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce in Sweden, and to several of the participating companies.
The value is in the follow-up
Most came back with meetings rather than signed deals. Veltio Pharma held ten meetings and pitched in an investor competition, and several conversations were with the kind of investors and partners the company wants, says CEO Stina Lundgren. She is careful about claiming results.
– It is too early to judge the outcome. In our experience, contacts like these take time to mature, and the real value usually shows in the follow-up rather than during the trip itself, she says.
Shahram Lavasani, CEO of ImmuneBiotech, which works on microbiome-based treatments and already had early commercial activity in China, says the delegation added speed and access: meetings with investors, regulatory advisers and academic groups, a panel appearance, and an investor pitch competition where ImmuneBiotech was among the winners. The follow-up has been quick.
– Several parties are already continuing discussions around investment, partnerships, research and market development, he says.
NextCell Pharma, a founding partner of the pavilion, also points to concrete outcomes. According to CEO Mathias Svahn, these outcomes include new discussions with potential partners, investors and ecosystem contacts. The stand also drew a visit from Professor Sun Dong, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry, who had been in Sweden in May.
For Jan Stenvang, CEO of Kripthonite Therapeutics, the most useful part was less the conference than the group around it.
– The most rewarding discussions were in connection with the Nordic life science delegation, where several very experienced people were open to talking about practicalities, perspectives and concrete opportunities to collaborate, he says. People with decades of experience bridging the Nordics and Hong Kong and China.
At the law firm Cirio, senior associate Hanna Yan Karlsson says the visit produced no immediate business, but that it built contacts and a clearer read of Hong Kong’s ecosystem, legal framework and appetite for Swedish biotech. Cirio’s own aim was to show how it can support collaboration between Swedish and Hong Kong companies.
Lucy Robertshaw frames the group the same way. The concrete outcomes, she says, were new relationships, partner and investor discussions and a clearer sense of what entering the region involves, with the real work starting now.
– A substantial part of my work now is following up and mapping the organisations we engaged with, what they offer, which companies they can support and who the relevant contacts are, she says. A return visit is planned for November.
Not a replacement but a complement
On what the region offers, the companies describe a complement to the established hubs rather than a substitute. For NextCell’s Mathias Svahn, Basel, Boston and San Francisco are world-leading but mature and Western-facing, while Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area add regional capital, clinical development, manufacturing partners and a very large healthcare market. Hanna Yan Karlsson points to the same division of labour: Hong Kong supplies a familiar international business and legal environment, while Shenzhen and Guangzhou bring industrial scale, research and access to China’s market, a combination she says is gaining relevance quickly as China invests in biotech.
Robertshaw makes the same point, but as a caution.
– I would not describe Hong Kong as a replacement for Basel, Boston or the San Francisco Bay Area, she says. It offers a different combination of relationships and opportunities, particularly for companies exploring China and wider Asian markets.
The value, she adds, depends on a company’s technology, stage and goals, and is weakest where there is no clear regional need or where priorities closer to home remain unresolved.
Stina Lundgren at Veltio Pharma found Hong Kong easy to work in as a European company: English is widely used, and the city offers a route into the Greater Bay Area and mainland China, a market that is far harder to approach alone.
– In many ways it reminded me of Boston: a compact hub where academia, investors and companies are close to each other and open to collaboration, she says.
Shahram Lavasani draws a sharper contrast. In Basel, Boston and the Bay Area, he says, investor attention tends to cluster around specific biotech themes and, increasingly, AI. In Hong Kong and China he met broader interest in health innovations that can scale, and unusual openness to his company’s microbiome work.
– Being on the ground changes your perspective completely, he says. For ImmuneBiotech, Hong Kong could become more than a market, a base connecting international capital, Greater China and the wider region.
Not everyone goes as far as that. Jan Stenvang sees Hong Kong as being on the rise, growing fast, with grants, facilities and know-how to offer, but with a way to go yet.
– It probably needs to mature a bit compared with longstanding areas such as Boston and Basel, he says.
Feet on the ground
Asked whether there is a cost to staying out of Asia, most said yes, with conditions. Stina Lundgren agrees that there is a cost in the long run. A growing share of life-science capital and partnering runs through Asian players, she says, and those relationships take time to build. Her advice is practical.
– Have feet on the ground, she says. Go with realistic expectations, book meetings well in advance rather than relying on the event itself, and plan for follow-up over time.
She credits a Hong Kong-based advisor for the right introductions. Shahram Lavasani puts the risk more strongly: staying away means missing not just customers and investors but regulatory shifts, research collaborations and new partnership models.
– Do not try to understand Asia only from Europe. Go there, listen, build relationships and allow your assumptions to be challenged, he says.
What turns networking into business, he adds, is the structured follow-up. NextCell’s Mathias Svahn agrees on early engagement but warns against going in blind. The Nordic weakness, he says, is rarely the science; it is turning innovation into partnerships, financing and market access, and Asia is too large and diverse to approach opportunistically.
Jan Stenvang names the practical costs: the time difference, the travel, the cultural distance, and the need to protect intellectual property, where China can differ from the West. The scepticism of five years ago has largely faded, he says, though some caution remains. Hanna Yan Karlsson is the most measured. China is worth following closely for most companies, she says, but the right level of engagement varies: for some it is worth exploring collaborations, for others it is enough to keep an eye on the competition.
Robertshaw says the companies that get value arrive with a clear objective but stay open to what they learn. They send someone who can move decisions, and they own the follow-up.
– A delegation can create access and accelerate understanding, but it cannot replace that work, she says. Deciding that an opportunity is premature or unsuitable, she adds, can itself be a useful result.
The same long game approach was evident when BioStock spoke to companies participating at BioJapan in Yokohama this month. Nordic companies described winning a Japanese partner as a matter of patience, trust and repeated engagement. Read more here. As for why Nordic companies are looking east now, Robertshaw sees a mix of investment, commercial openings and partners with complementary strengths, but also access to different patient populations and, for advanced therapies such as CAR-T and gene therapy, the clinical and manufacturing partners needed to reach them.
That echoes what BioStock heard in Zurich, where the gap companies named was capital and the route to scale rather than the science. Two of the delegation are already set to return to Hong Kong in November: Robertshaw, to follow up on the conversations started in September and help companies explore further investment and business opportunities, and ImmuneBiotech, whose pitch-competition win brings an invitation back to BIOHK’s Future Hong Kong grand final.
Lucy Robertshaw wrote a guest column for BioStock in March 2026. Read it here: The gateway to Asia is through Hong Kong.
