York-based Abingdon on track to produce 150 million rapid tests a year in response to Covid-19

Abingdon Health, which is a developer and manufacturer of rapid tests, has announced its unaudited interim results for the six months ended 31 December 2020.

Abingdon recently completed the delivery of 1m units of its AbC-19TM COVID-19 rapid antibody test to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

A contract was also agreed in January 2021 for a technical transfer to manufacture a COVID-19 antigen test for a customer in the UK.

The company said the IPO of Abingdon Health on AIM in December 2020 raised £20m (net) to build operational capacity.

The first stage of building work on the company's manufacturing sites in York and Doncaster was also completed over the year.

Over the year, revenue increased significantly to £7.69m, compared with £1.55m in the same period the previous year, predominantly due to COVID- 19 related activities.

The operating loss before exceptional items was £0.06m, compared with a loss of £0.75m in the same period the year before. The profit after tax was £0.14m.

Initial test data also shows the effectiveness of the AbC-19TM COVID-19 rapid antibody test in demonstrating an immune response of patients to the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the company said.

Chris Yates, CEO at Abingdon Health PLC, commented: “I am pleased to report Abingdon Health’s maiden set of interim results since our listing on the AIM market in December 2020.

"Over the past six months, the company has made significant commercial progress across the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 commercial pipeline and, operationally, Abingdon Health has successfully completed the first phase of its manufacturing expansion.

"Due to the growing global demand for lateral-flow tests, the company is continuing to scale up and is on track to be able to produce 150 million tests per annum by the end of 2021.

"Over recent weeks, there has been growing evidence that rapid antibody testing can be used to determine an individual's antibody status both prior to and after vaccination, a crucial factor in stratifying patients and determining resource allocation on overburdened health systems.

"As a result of this, and the leading accuracy of Abingdon Health’s test, the company anticipates an increased demand for rapid antibody tests that can be used as a companion to COVID 19 vaccines.

"Whilst the timing of any antibody testing programme roll-outs and future orders are difficult to accurately predict given the range of factors that the company is dealing with from, inter alia, the evolving regulatory processes and the impact of COVID-19 virus mutations, the board remains confident in both the short and medium-term growth opportunities.

"The company’s Tier 1 order pipeline for AbC-19TM continues to grow and this gives the board the confidence in the company’s ability to achieve market expectations for the year."

Last month, Abingdon Health, which has delivered a million orders of its rapid Covid-19 test to the Department of Health and Social Care, welcomed the news that a university study has found its AbC-19TM test to be “highly accurate”.

The York-based firm said the study was performed by scientists at Public Health England and the Universities of Bristol, Warwick and Cambridge.

The research examined the performance of four lateral flow rapid antibody tests using the same batch of samples.

Abingdon said that although the study remains subject to peer review, it shows that AbC-19TM is highly accurate when tested on samples that have previously proved positive for the virus.

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