Embryo business set to grow

By DANIEL RIORDAN

Build it and they will come?

Not quite, but ICPbio's new $5 million home, officially opened by Science Minister Pete Hodgson yesterday, means the Henderson-based company is happy to seek capital from outside investors for the first time in 12 years.

The company employs about 30 staff to make a range of animal embryo transplant products, almost all of them sold overseas.

Chief executive Maxine Simmons, who founded ICPbio with business development director Rosemary Sharpin in 1983, said the new base translated to a fourfold increase in production capacity, compared with its old and cramped Kingsland headquarters.

The company, which shifted this year, is preparing to hire more staff, lift its production and look for outside funding, confident in its new environment.

The only investors apart from the founders' families was an Australian venture capitalist who had a quarter share for three years in the early 1990s.

Simmons says the environment for local biotech companies is improving all the time.

Investors are becoming more biotech savvy, although they still have a way to go, and the Government has identified the sector as one that offers knowledge-based growth.

"There's a lot more acceptance of the kind of business we are, compared with five years ago."

Is it a good time to be seeking money for biotech?

"Well, we're well established with a good track record, we're certainly not blue sky."