BETTER jobs and higher pay are on the horizon for future Institute of Technical Education (ITE) graduates, who will be getting training that will get them work in some of Singapore's most advanced industries.

For a start, ITE is targeting the booming biomedical industry.

It will launch a new course in Chemical Process Technology (Biologics) next year.

The curriculum for the course has been developed with the help of key industry players such as pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

The 40 students who will be part of the inaugural batch will be trained in the operation and maintenance of biologics production equipment and facilities, as well as how to monitor and control processes for production.

Upon graduation, they will be qualified to be process technicians, a job that should pay them well as demand rises, said ITE chairman Bob Tan.

The industry currently employs around 1,300 people here, but that number is expected to double within the next two years, he said.

Mr Tan said that though the job involves repetitive production work, it requires a high level of knowledge and skill.

Retaining such workers will therefore be a priority for companies which hire them, he said.

'The message we want to give employers is to think about appropriate pay in order to retain workers,' Mr Tan said.

'To make sure the industry succeeds and to discourage job hopping, they should be paying well above the market rate of an ITE graduate, which is around $1,600,' he added.

The announcement of the course yesterday marks the latest move by ITE to shift its focus towards training students for work in higher value-added industries.

'Singapore's economic landscape is changing quite rapidly, and the days of just engineering at ITE are over,' Mr Tan said.

Next week, the ITE will announce a list of new courses for the coming year, many of which have been revamped to meet new industry standards and target future growth areas.

'We're trying to make sure we're training the future workforce,' said Mr Tan.

Biologics, a subset of pharmaceuticals that involves the production of biological products used to treat diseases and injuries, is among the fast-growing new areas, and has attracted nearly $3 billion in investments over the last four years.

The investments will lead to six new biologics manufacturing plants springing up in Singapore, including those by industry powerhouses such as GSK, Lonza and Genentech.

Earlier this year, Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang said biologics was set to be a 'new niche' for Singapore in the post-recession global economy.

The global biologics industry is currently growing at a rate of 10 per cent to 15 per cent a year, compared with 1 per cent for the pharmaceuticals industry as a whole.

By next year, analysts expect sales of biologics products to make up 60 per cent of the sales growth of drugs.

In its 2007 annual report, JTC Corporation, the country's industrial landlord, said Singapore was the only country in Asia that had 'capabilities across the entire value chain of biologics, from research and development to pilot projects and beyond that to commercial manufacturing'.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also noted that while drug companies had initially questioned if Singapore could transition from producing chemical drugs to biologics, Singapore met the challenge with training and other measures.

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