Pharma Zen joins Alliance for new venture

By PHILILLA STEVENSON and NZPA

A joint venture between the South Island's Alliance meat company and fledgling Dunedin biotechnology company Pharma Zen, aims to add value to meat industry co-products.

Alliance chief executive Owen Poole said the new venture, New Zealand Pharma Products, would start with an unnamed beef product.

Pharma Zen was started this month to commercialise biotechnology products to strengthen animal and human immune systems. Its six initial products included boosts for the immune systems of animals and humans, a way to prevent and treat animal scours, and colostrum supplements for animals.

"Our aim is to establish what value can be added to sheepmeat co-products," Mr Poole said.

There was potential to add value to raw material, especially with sheepmeat as international biotechnology research to date had largely focused on beef products.

He said the products the company was looking at would be of high value and for use in both human and animal health applications.

The new venture will marry Alliance, as the owner of the raw animal products, with the intellectual property of Pharma Zen, which buys its technology from another Dunedin company, Zenith Technology.

Pharma Zen has bought the rights and know-how of several animal remedy products from Zenith Technology. It is traded on the Stock Exchange's second board.