The distribution of Germany’s five biggest lab players
The top five lab players in Germany take up about 40% of the for-profit market and 30% of the total market. This week HBI looks at their distribution across the country to help spot further consolidation opportunities and trends in regional coverage.
It’s tricky to work out the size of the German market. Total spend is about €9bn but most operators believe that about €6bn of this is accessible to the private sector. The top five players – Limbach, Sonic, Synlab, Amedes and LADR, collectively take up a minority of market share, suggesting that there’s at least €3.5bn held by smaller players or in unconsolidated practices.
Much consolidation has already happened around the Rhine, as is clear from the map, but there are also areas in central and northern Germany where none of the five companies own a lab. We’ve only included labs that a wholly owned by the company (for the sake of consistency) and not those that are run in partnership or run by a private-company in a public institution. For example, LADR runs a handful of hospital labs (which we haven’t included) in the south but the map reveals that its network of labs is strongest in the north.
Nor do we differentiate between different types of labs in this network. Some are specialist and some are general but all work in pathology. This means we’ve excluded the labs that (where we can tell) work wholly in areas like food analysis, and environmental testing, because some of these companies reach into those industries.
We would welcome your thoughts on this story. Email your views to Rachel Lewis or call 0207 183 3779.
