B2B prospect lists for Switzerland.

01  The Swiss market

A small country with dense industrial clusters

Switzerland has 26 cantons and four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. For a sales team that means one country with several language regions, and a list can be scoped to the cantons you actually serve.

Pharma and life sciences: Basel, Zurich and the Health Valley

The Basel region (Basel-Stadt, Basel-Landschaft and neighbouring areas) is built around the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. According to the cantons' statistical economic report, the sector generated 44.9% of Basel-Stadt's value added in 2022, and more than 800 companies belong to the Basel Area life sciences cluster, from large research-based groups to SMEs, start-ups and spin-offs. The Swiss Rhine ports, the Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg airport and the proximity to Germany and France give the region excellent access to major transport routes.

The canton of Zurich is best known for finance, but according to the canton's 2024 location report it also has the most medtech jobs of any Swiss canton, as well as the most jobs in biotech, medical research and laboratory development. In the west, the Swiss Health Valley spans the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Valais, Fribourg, Neuchâtel and Jura, with around 1,340 biotech, medtech, pharma, digital health and nutrition players. In Valais, Visp and Monthey have grown from energy-intensive chemistry into fine chemicals, pharmaceutical manufacturing and biomanufacturing.

Industrial and manufacturing: precision engineering

The machinery, electrical and metal industry employs around 320,000 people in Switzerland and generates roughly half of the country's industrial value added. About 18% of those employees work in Eastern Switzerland, where the Rhine Valley (Rheintal) in the canton of St. Gallen is known as a cluster for precision and high-tech products. Along the Jura Arc, from Geneva via the Vallée de Joux and Sainte-Croix to Solothurn and Schaffhausen, and through La Chaux-de-Fonds, Le Locle and Biel/Bienne, watchmaking has built a deep base of high-precision mechanical expertise. Valais adds a large research and production centre for the aluminium industry around Sierre.

Energy and environmental technology: built on hydropower

In 2024, 59.6% of Swiss electricity came from hydropower, 28.4% from nuclear power and 7.4% from solar PV, which grew by 21.3% on the year. The mountain cantons are central to this: Valais alone has 46 dams and supplies more than a quarter of Swiss hydropower. Abundant and affordable hydropower is also what drew chemical and pharmaceutical companies to Valais from the early 20th century.

Food and agriculture: Fribourg and beyond

The canton of Fribourg is the lead authority in the Food & Nutrition Cluster of the Capital Region Switzerland. It is home to Gruyère AOP cheese-making, large-scale dairy processing, chocolate production (the factory in Broc has been making chocolate since 1898) and the AgriCo campus for agricultural and food innovation in St-Aubin. Nutrition is also one of the fields covered by the Health Valley, with research strength in Vaud.

How a Swiss list is built

Choose your unit, describe what you sell and name the cantons or regions you want covered, or the whole country. Nexfield works through all 56 sub-sectors of your unit and returns only companies that are probable buyers, never your competitors. Each row comes with canton, city, sub-sector, company size, a priority rating and one sentence explaining why the company belongs on your list.