Bio valve pushes ChargePoint sales by £8.3m

ChargePoint Technology, the Liverpool-based manufacturer that supplies precision containment valves, has announced sales of £8.3m for 2015, up 9% from 2014, thanks to its AseptiSafe valve

ChargePoint’svalves are used to transfer powders used in the manufacturing process including when making drugs in tablet form. Its existing PharmaSafe valves are used for working with chemically-synthesised pharmaceuticals.

The company said that main focus of 2015 was taking to the marketplace a patented valve for drugs made from biological sources – such as vaccines – where raw materials must be certified as having remained free from bacterial contamination

The AseptiSafe bio valve achieves this requirement by removing the need for large scale clean rooms, according to ChargePoint.

Managing director, Chris Eccles, said: “It is a revolutionary product and at a stroke takes down the high grade space requirement from a room to something about the size of a dinner plate. So we are talking about an industrial step change.”

ChargePoint said it’s biggest marketplace is the USA, where it achieved 20% of revenues from customers include that Merck, Roche Genentech and Johnson & Johnson.  In the UK GSK and Aptuit are served by the business while in Central Europe sales have been led by Switzerland, Germany and Belgium from pharma heavyweights such as Roche, Pfizer, Novartis, Teva and Sanofi.

 During 2015, China led ChargePoint’s progress in Asia.  “Pharma companies there are looking to export into the West,” said Chris Eccles. “They have to adapt and meet our standards and regulatory requirements and so are turning to proven Western tech like ours.

“There’s a great deal of activity upgrading manufacturing facilities, which has been great for us.  In Japan, arguably the world’s most highly regulated pharma manufacturing centre, our sales are led by pharma companies looking to maintain and upgrade facilities.”

 In June ChargePoint is moving to a new production facility in Speke, adjacent to its exiting site. The 27,000 sq. ft. plant is being fitted out with over 750k of new machinery and other investments in plant and facilities that take the fit-out spend over £1 million for a state-of-the-art facility.