New products boosting food safety sales – Neogen
The firm said the Amplified Nucleic Single Temperature Reaction (ANSR) system is a ‘big part’ of the growth opportunity going forward with 20 instruments already in placements.
Neogen’s ANSR for Listeria which provides results after only 18 minutes of reaction time compared to other commercially molecular amplification tests that require up to 3 hours of reaction time, was introduced in August.
ANSR for Salmonella recently received performance validation from the AOAC Research Institute and the Listeria test’s approval is pending.
Device progress
In an earnings call discussing the results, Lon M. Bohannon, president, chief operating officer and director of Neogen, said: “We've now placed instruments with end users in the US, Canada and Mexico and have sold multiple instruments to distributors in Latin America and in Asia.
“We had numerous evaluations underway, with prospects interested in the ANSR technology to test for both Salmonella and Listeria. And we're also proceeding with efforts to gain AOAC approval for ANSR Listeria. We already have AOAC approval for Salmonella, and we're pursuing additional third-party approvals in Europe for the unique ANSR pathogen test platform,” he added.
“New products released in the last three to six months contributed to the sales growth in each of these product lines, and as many as 12 to 15 additional new products are scheduled for launch as we move through the rest of our 2013 fiscal year.”
Neogen said net income for Q1 of full year 2013, which ended 31 August, increased 11.8% from the prior year to $6.7m, compared to net income of $6m in Q1 of full year 2012.
Lack of dominance
In the same operating call, James L. Herbert, chairman and chief executive officer, admitted the firm hadn’t been as dominant as they would like to have been for the last 10 years.
“At one point in time, we were the first one out with the test for E.coli O15787 that the US Department of Agriculture was used into -- for surveillance for that, particularly in ground beef and hamburger.
“So our business has been okay there. But we've had plenty of competition. And we were searching for a new platform that will let us have a test that is more sensitive and faster.
“That's the whole name of the game is easier, faster, cheaper. And this new technology what we've branded is our ANSR technology, we think, provides us that and puts us in a position to be more competitive against probably on a worldwide basis, probably half a dozen people that are somewhat playing in that pathogen market.”
