A VERTINARY care group which specialises in creating animal medicines and microchipping has positioned itself to accelerate growth over the next three to five years.

Animalcare, based at York Business Park is entering the Large Business of the Year category in recognition of the process it has in place to source new, innovative products and its investment of time and effort to ensure it achieves successful organic growth.

The priority for Animalcare is to ensure the products are differentiated from the competition within the market, especially against the pharmaceutical companies and to explore range of business opportunities available.

The business's Licensed Veterinary Medicines division makes up a just over 60 per cent of revenues, and is a key area of focus for the company.

It has been significantly invested in, and in the year ended June 30, 2015 Animalcare launched five new products ranging from pain relief for cats and dogs to an anaesthetic agent for a range of animals.

Companion Animal Identification is another strand of the company focusing on pet microchipping which is supported by a robust registration process and scanning network to identify lost pets.

Although this part of the business only makes up about a fifth of revenues the company is well placed to benefit from the legalisations which will see the compulsory chipping of all dogs in England, Wales and Scotland in April 2016.

Animalcare now maintains the contact details of more than four million owners whose pets are microchipped with one of Animalcare’s microchips.

It is not only dogs and cats that are chipped by Animalcare’s chips, as four elephants, six otters and 12 wolves are all tagged.

Lianne Cawthorne, a spokesperson for Animalcare, which employs a team of 57 in York, said: "While Animalcare’s market is country-wide and increasingly European, the company is committed to the York area.

"When relocating to bigger premises in 2012 the company searched long and hard to stay in the area and in commutable distance of its then 55 staff, when a move out of the area could have been attractive for more commercial reasons.

"Animalcare’s strategy for the next three years is simple, to continue development of differentiated generic medicines, to enhance generic medicines into product development pipeline and to increase the sales of the company’s current products outside the UK."

Animalcare is a keen supporter of various local organisations including the York Civic Trust and Science City York’s Bioscience Cluster. For many years staff from Animalcare have assisted the University of York in its York Award program and also its internship program.

Animalcare has a nominated charity each year where the company matches pound for pound any money raised by staff members. The current charity is the children’s cancer charity based in Leeds.

Animalcare understands that marketing and sales is key to its success, so has focussed on getting the right calibre of people employed across all areas of the business, ranging from technically trained pharmaceutical experts, to extra vets on site.