Life science firms recognised in Queen's Awards for Enterprise
They are honoured in both the Innovation and International Trade Awards, with PSL and Peak Scientific double award winners
The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the UK’s most prestigious business awards, given only to companies or individuals who are outstanding in their field. Now in their 50th year, in 2016 life sciences firms took a share of the accolades.
Powder Systems (PSL) and Peak Scientific were double award winners – in both the International Trade and Innovation categories.
Liverpool-based PSL took its Innovation Award for developing an efficient manufacturing process for microspheres of uniform size and distribution used in drug delivery. Polymeric microspheres are used as time-released capsules in injectable drugs with a range of potential applications from vaccines, hormones, anti-cancer drugs to diabetes treatment. A non-uniform microsphere mix would make the drug less effective.
PSL has developed a machine that can efficiently produce sterile, uniform beads of the right size. The process incorporates a number of steps into a single machine that can scale from small to full commercial production sizes. The machine uses 98.7% of the pharmaceutical product, which is very important to manufacturers as every gram of product can be valued at several thousands of dollars.
PSL also won an International Trade Award for outstanding growth in overseas sales over three years. Originally a turnkey engineering provider, a range of product innovations in 2010 enabled the company to move to being a product based manufacturer. Products were specifically designed to address global market demands and overseas sales account for more than 90% of total turnover. Traditional markets in Europe and the US remain strong, but in the last three years business has expanded into India, Latin America, Australia, China and SE Asia. Exports have grown by more than 40% over three years.
'The awards have fallen in a year of significant growth for us and they accentuate the core values that have been with us since the beginning of Quality, Innovation and Global Relationships,' said Amanda Pitcher, PSL Managing Director. 'Looking to the future – at PSL we never stand still. We pride ourselves in being inventors of new technology and unique ways of doing things to continue contributing to global pharmaceutical innovation.'
Peak Scientific Instruments received its Innovation Award for the Peak Protected Complete Service Plan which guarantees an on-site engineer call-out anywhere in the world for the firm's clients in hospitals, laboratories, oil rigs and at major international sporting events.
The introduction of a 72-hour commitment to provide a service engineer on-site worldwide is designed to overcome potential customers’ hesitation to buy the product and encourage them to place their trust in the company. To implement this service the applicant had to overcome issues with availability of parts, language, transport and visas.
Peak Scientific took its International Trade award for outstanding growth in international sales over three years. The firm previously won awards International Trade in 2004, 2007, 2011 and 2014.
The company designs and manufactures laboratory gas generators for use in analytical testing, academic research laboratories, the food and drink industry, and QA/QC laboratories. The generators are an alternative to using gas cylinders and considerably improve safety within laboratories. World leaders in its field the company has 17 offices globally and exports have grown by 38% over three years and now go to more than 130 markets worldwide. Overseas sales account for 85% of total turnover.
Plasticell took an Innovation Award in recognition of the firm’s contribution to the advancement of regenerative medicine, cell and gene therapy, as well as other areas of biomedical research.
The firm has developed the Combicult system, which is able to test and select the best methods of differentiating stem cells in record time. Stem cells are valuable tools in the next generation of therapeutic approaches but discovering efficient ways (called 'protocols') to turn stem cells into target cell types (e.g. heart cells, nerve cells) is extremely difficult, time consuming and resource-intensive.
Plasticell's innovation enables the simultaneous testing of up to 100,000 different protocols. To achieve this stem cells are grown on micrometre-scale beads, which are subjected to different growing conditions. The beads are tracked so that the researcher knows exactly what conditions the cells have been through. This innovation allows researchers to test a large number of new protocols in parallel and discover the most efficient way of differentiating the cells for their needs. Plasticell has been in operation since 2002 and the success of Combicult means that the company has enjoyed rapid growth.
In 2010, Plasticell spun out a sister biotechnology venture, Progenitor Therapeutics, focused on the discovery of small molecule drugs that regenerate specific tissues of the body in response to disease or ageing.
Mettler Toledo Safeline won its Innovation Award for developing a line of advanced metal detection products. The industry standard is to use detectors tuned to a single radio frequency, but the firm has developed signal generation and processing techniques to deploy variable and dual-simultaneous frequency detectors. The development effort to achieve this has been significant with five granted patents and five further disclosures going through the patenting process.
The new devices have 50% improved detection capabilities and their use allows customers to maintain standards while avoiding inefficient and costly false positive readings.
'This award recognises the deep expertise of the Safeline team and its reputation for the design and manufacture of technologically advanced metal detectors. With over 100,000 systems installed globally, we have accumulated thousands of man-years of experience, which allows us to continuously improve our products and processes. On behalf of the global network of Mettler-Toledo employees, I am proud that the company has received this prestigious award in recognition of its high performance products and commitment to innovation,' said Alan Purvis, Managing Director, Mettler Toledo Safeline.
The company won an International Trade award in 2012.
International trade awards
Five firms in the pharmaceutical and life science sector have seen their exports rise significantly and took International Trade Awards.
St Neot's-based Kinesis, for example, was recognised for achieving continuous growth in export sales over the last six years of business. The firm is a supplier and servicer of chromatography, liquid handling, sample storage and medicinal chemistry consumables and equipment. Overseas sales have grown by more than 200% in the last six years with the percentage of sales exported growing from 19% to 56% over the same period.
Sudbury, Suffolk-based ProSynth won its award for outstanding growth in overseas sales over three years. The company produces chemical intermediates for the global R&D market, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, a service known as custom synthesis. A strategy of developing products of greater complexity and moving into international markets enabled the business to survive a global recession in R&D in 2013 and international sales have grown over three years by over 90% and now account for more than 60% of total turnover.
Lifescience Dynamics, founded in 2004 as a privately owned management consulting firm, also took an International Trade Award for growth over three years. The London-based firm provides support to global pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device and diagnostic companies in three areas: market research; competitive intelligence; market access, pricing & reimbursements.
Overseas sales have grown by 200% over the last three years with an increase in UK employees, overall sales and profitability. The proportion of sales exported has increased to 95% of total sales.
Alba Bioscience (trading as Quotient), a commercial stage diagnostics company providing innovative tests for blood grouping and serological disease screening, won its award for continuous growth over the last six years. Overseas sales grew by 290% and the percentage exported also increased from 57% to 94% of revenues. It has built its market consistently over the last six years, while making major investments in R&D, market development, and manufacturing capability.
Dermal Technology Laboratory, based in Keele, Staffordshire, which specialises in the dermal absorption of chemicals using exclusively in vitro methods as required by governments to ensure the safety of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and industrial chemicals, won the Queen’s Award for International Trade for growth in overseas earnings of 134% over the last six years. The company says it is the largest provider of non-animal skin absorption studies in the world. Exports have grown to represent more than 80% of total sales. The majority of these are to Europe, but sales are also made to the US and Japan.
Finally, Stelfox UK in Brighton, a specialist executive recruitment firm whose clients are based globally and include small to large pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies, saw overseas earnings grow from £1.2m to £1.82m. They now represent 70% of overall earnings. The firm's largest export market is the Netherlands, followed by Germany. It won the International Trade award for growth in overseas earnings of 46% over the last three years.
In total, 254 awards were presented: 150 for International Trade, 92 for Innovation, seven for Sustainable Development and five for Enterprise Promotion.
