Science cluster looks to fertile markets

By SIMON COLLINS

A high-tech Hamilton company has taken on 25 new staff to service soaring sales after a breakthrough in the United States.

DEC International, formerly known as the Dairy Equipment Company, is being hailed as a model for a new agricultural biotechnology "cluster" being launched in Hamilton tonight.

Chief executive Dean Epps said that in the three months after the company broke into the US market its sales of its cattle-fertility products there were equivalent to a year's worth in New Zealand.

Next year's business could be 50 per cent higher.

He has taken on 25 extra staff and is recruiting "at least five or 10 more". In the next two years, he sees staff numbers rising from about 85 to between 100 and 150.

The product, known as CIDR, is inserted in the vagina of cows that are not ovulating normally. About 400,000 units are sold in New Zealand each year.

Although launched in New Zealand back in 1987, it has taken DEC five years and $3 million to do the trials in the US required for approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.

So far, approval has been granted only for beef cattle, but approval for dairy cattle is also expected in the next year.

Three-quarters of DEC's annual sales of around $10 million are already overseas, mainly in Australia, Canada and Japan.

"In animal fertility treatment, we would be one of the leading companies in the world in veterinary controlled release products," Epps said.

The company is working on other controlled-release products through a subsidiary, Interag, which employs five scientists on AgResearch's Ruakura campus. It also has a 50 per cent stake in another company, Sensortec, which provides technology for scanning the composition of milk.

Interag and Sensortec are among 30 Waikato companies, research institutes and other agencies that have been invited to AgResearch's Ruakura conference centre tonight to launch the agricultural biotech cluster.