Biotrace and Pall Corp enter new deal
exclusive global marketing and distribution rights to its range of
microbiological air monitoring products for the pharma industry in
order to broaden the geographic coverage of its product sales.
"This agreement is another important milestone in our strategy to develop a broad business base in industrial microbiology and Pall's customer relationships worldwide in the pharmaceutical industries will greatly enhance our presence in this attractive market," said Ian Johnson, CEO of Biotrace.
Biotrace's Ascotec products are used to monitor the quality of the air and compressed gases in the production environment. They are used wherever clean rooms are required for manufacturing of pharmaceuticals to capture bacteria in the environment for subsequent monitoring.
Microbiological monitoring of manufacturing processes is critical to ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and product safety.
As part of a Process Analytical Technology (PAT) initiative launched in 2004, the US Food and Drug Administration has been actively encouraging drug manufacturers to adopt new analytical technologies to better control manufacturing processes and provide greater assurances of product safety.
The new distribution agreement with Pall will provide the industry with increased access to the Ascotec air monitoring technologies to better enable them to achieve the goals of the PAT, said Biotrace.
As part of the worldwide agreement, the two companies will also work together on the development of additional new products for the rapid detection of contamination.
"The combination of Pall's filtration technologies and know how with our technologies and expertise in rapid microbiology will create the next generation of fast testing solutions reducing the 'time to result' and improving production efficiency," said Ken Frank, corporate vice president of Pall.
Biotrace has also been busy making a series of acquisitions of late in order to expand its product line, allowing it to compete more strongly with rivals servicing this sector and help maintain its strategy of making 80 per cent of its turnover from consumable products.
The company acquired MicroSafe Group, an Italian supplier of microbiological testing products for the pharmaceutical, food and defence sectors, for £2.5 m (€2 million) in September and also bought out its share in French joint venture Biotrace.
In June 2004 the firm also acquired Tecra, which makes safety products for the food manufacturing industry, and in the same year it also snapped up International BioProducts, another food microbiology specialist.
