GM stance likely to hit $76m investment

By PETER GRIFFIN


The head of one of the world's largest biotechnology companies wants to invest millions of dollars in New Zealand.

However, Greg Lucier, of Nasdaq-listed Invitrogen, said New Zealand's stance on genetic modification and under-investment in biotech were hurting the country's chances of becoming a research and development lab to the world.

Invitrogen has a large manufacturing operation in South Auckland and New Zealanders run the company's operations in Australia. Combined, the two countries contribute $115 million a year to Invitrogen's global business.

Chief executive Lucier said the company was planning to set up a venture investment fund of between US$50 million ($76.4 million) and US$100 million in size.

The company would scour New Zealand for investment targets.

Invitrogen employs 3800 people, mainly scientists, and has other manufacturing sites in the United States, Brazil, Scotland and Japan. It harvests cells from New Zealand cattle herds to use in drug research and production.

The absence of adverse factors such as mad cow disease in New Zealand and Australian herds was encouraging Invitrogen to harvest more raw materials for use in bio-pharmaceuticals - drugs that consist of living cultures.

Lucier said New Zealand scientists had become real experts in genetics and DNA research but the country's biotech industry lagged behind others, which were investing more heavily to lead in the agricultural race.

"If I was in New Zealand and running the place I'd do it very differently," he said. "You want to make this a research and development lab for the rest of the world."

He would like to see more Government funding in biotech projects to create an infrastructure that spawned ideas - pointing to the Australian stem cell network, which had become a world leader in the research.

Lucier said Europeans and New Zealanders stood together in their strong opposition to genetic modification.

But he said the arguments were emotional arguments and mankind had been modifying crops for thousands of years. Of the protesters who take to the streets in anti-GM rallies, Lucier said: "If one of them had a life-threatening disease, they wouldn't refuse a drug that could save them."