Randox tipped as next Galen <CW-6>on <CW-6>tech breakthrough

A Northern Ireland diagnostics company will today present a technological breakthrough that it hopes will transform it from a £20-million-sterling-a-year (operation (€32.3 million) to a £100-million-per-annum performer.

Randox Laboratories, a privately owned Co Antrim-based firm, is tipped as potentially the next Galen Holdings, the North's first £1-billion-a-year company.

Galen's fairytale transformation from a small speciality pharmaceutical company, founded in 1968 in Portadown, to a global business that took the markets by storm, is a hard act to follow.

But Randox is not one to follow in anyone's shadow. In 1982 it employed two people. Now it has more than 500 people in Northern Ireland and across the world.

Today in Belfast it will announce plans to create 100 jobs when it unveils a technological breakthrough that took nine years and £35 million to develop - the biochip array analyser or the BAT as it is known in Randox. The device will speed up the diagnostic process by marrying biotechnology and imaging electronics.

According to Randox, it will enable the simultaneous measurement of multiple substances in a single drop of serum in minutes. "We believe it will facilitate more accurate diagnosis of disease and also the potentially earlier detection of diseases," says Mr Clement Fitzgerald, sales and marketing director of Randox.

The company is privately owned by the Fitzgerald family. Dr Peter Fitzgerald, managing director, and his mother, Mrs Whilimena Fitzgerald, financial director, founded it in 1982.

It has become one of the UK's fastest-growing diagnostics companies; its core disciplines revolve around clinical pathology in human health care and veterinary pathology and biochemistry.

Randox specialises in the manufacturer of clinical chemistry environmental diagnostic kits, and quality control serums. Its products are used in hospital and veterinary laboratories throughout the world.

In the last 20 years the company says its average revenue growth has been 60 per cent per annum; this has been recognised by a series of prestigious awards - it is a four times winner of the Queen's Award For Export Achievement.

Randox invests 28 per cent of its gross income each year on research and development. According to Dr Fitzgerald, the firm has no venture capital partners nor has it sought finance from outside the family or sales growth.

"We are very singleminded in that we want to become the number one diagnostic company in the world. Our strategy has evolved around that and right from day one we have operated in an international market.

"Northern Ireland has a great reputation in medicine and we come from a high-technology background so we used that platform to expand into the world," Dr Fitzgerald said.

He said Randox's key market is the UK, with France and China as close seconds. It is also seeking to develop its UK business.

Randox believes its BAT device will lead to rapid growth in the future. "We are opening the door to the world for biochip array technology, we are the first company to bring it to the market place and this will fundamentally change Randox because we are moving into the technology market," Dr Fitzgerald said.

He admits the firm's success has attracted a multitude of would-be suitors.

"If we were to break the company or to put the whole company on the market we would be playing the market games and we could lose our focus," Dr Fitzgerald said.

But Randox is not ruling out potential opportunities.

"We have set our targets extremely high, our focus is on companies such as Roche and Abbot," Dr Fitzgerald said.