RAPIDLY growing York business Avacta has opened new manufacturing premises to cope with expanding demand for its products.

The new factory in Thorp Arch, near Wetherby, will assemble both the company’s revolutionary benchtop laboratory analyser, Optim, which accelerates the development of drugs, and laboratory diagnostic testing equipment for the veterinary health-care market.

Avacta’s biochemistry laboratories will continue to be based at York Science Park’s Biocentre, and two people will be added to the total 50 staff.

The business is now split into two divisions: Avacta Animal Health and Avacta Analytical. Avacta Analytical provides advanced analytical instrumentation and contract research services to the biopharmaceutical sector, and Avacta Animal Health provides laboratory diagnostic testing and diagnostic equipment to the veterinary healthcare market The decision to expand at Thorp Arch followed expert advice from the Manufacturing Advisory Service Yorkshire & Humber (MAS Y&H), which helped the group develop a successful manufacturing plan.

MAS Y&H specialist Dean Morgan carried out a 30-day MAS strategic improvement project, which included helping to set up manufacturing systems and a supply chain for the newly designed products. This includes the AX-1, which offers point-of-care blood tests for vets.

Dr Ed Quinn, Avacta Animal Health’s product development manager, said: “We are experts in our field and have a strong track record of innovative product development, but the help from MAS Y&H in translating our innovation into manufacturable products has been invaluable.”

Dr Rob Harrand, Avacta Analytical’s head of production development, said: “Bringing Dean in was a real turning point. His in-depth knowledge of manufacturing combined with his experience and contacts were invaluable. “We thought developing the product was 90 per cent of the task and manufacturing it was ten per cent; we now know the reality. If we had a problem, he always seemed to have the solution.”

The Thorp Arch factory is opening as the Avacta Group braces itself for a surge in sales of Optim.

As reported in The Press last week, it has signed a distribution agreement to sell Optim into the combined billion dollar market of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.