Avacta ‘hits the bullseye’ with commercial agreement with technology giant

Shares in the York-based company, spun out of the University of Leeds in 2004, lifted 0.13p yesterday to 1.63p, an increase of 8.67 per cent.

Avacta’s commercial agreement with Pall will see the two companies collaborate to develop and market products and advanced analytical services for the life sciences industry.

Pall also agreed to market and support Optim, Avacta’s flagship biopharmaceutical analysis tool, in North America. Alastair Smith, chief executive of Avacta, said: “This is a very significant agreement for Avacta and I expect it to be transformational for the group.

“It provides a world class commercial and product development partner in the strategically critical North American market and potentially wider afield.

“Optim is a powerful tool designed to reduce the costs associated with developing and manufacturing biological products and this sales and marketing agreement with Pall has significantly enhanced our prospects of exploiting Optim’s significant market potential throughout the wider bioprocess market.”

Optim is designed to speed up and reduce the cost of drug development.

It claims to deliver vital information tens of times faster than other approaches using much smaller samples.

Ken Frank, senior vice president of Pall Corporation and president of its biopharmaceutical division, said: “The Optim technology and Avacta’s expertise is a perfect complement to Pall’s strategic position in Total Fluid ManagementSM for our biopharmaceutical customers.

“This agreement allows us to combine our process know-how and existing products and services with this exciting new technology to meet very important needs in process development, process monitoring and high throughput analytics.” Analysts at house broker XCAP said Avacta has hit “the bullseye” with the tie-up.

“Pall has spent over six months in detailed negotiation and preparation for this deal,” they said.

“The company has a powerful sales force which gives enormous commercial credibility to Avac-ta.”