£3.8M investment in global R&D pays off as product sales grow over 20% 

TTP Labtech, global developer and manufacturer of innovative automated laboratory equipment, has today reported details of its success in 2012, as well as its growth plans for 2013.Continuing its track record of pioneering automation drug discovery products, TTP Labtech’s £3.8M investment in R&D and entrance into new markets paid off as product sales for 2012 were up over 20 percent compared to the year previous, despite the challenging economy. This progress was driven by launching products into new markets, including biological sample storage and liquid handling for molecular biology applications, as well as continued growth in the sale of established products.

“Many drug discovery laboratories are facing challenging circumstances that require them to continually optimise their screening strategies and harness more automation,” said Jas Sanghera, TTP Labtech’s Managing Director. “We’re poised to embrace these changes in the environment by driving the development of solutions that meet the ever-evolving needs of our customers and applying this insight to new market sectors.”

As such, the company shifted emphasis slightly during 2012 to make more effective use of its considerable product development expertise, positioning it for strong growth this year. “When we started over a decade ago, we primarily provided consultative insight for customers requiring bespoke automated platforms,” commented Sanghera. “However, over the last few years, our internal R&D teams have proved time and time again to be exceptionally good at developing innovative new automated technologies that truly meet customer needs. In 2012, we continued to invest in our product development capabilities and see product sales as being a strong driver of revenue growth into 2013 and beyond.”

This approach has included optimising every department within the company to reflect the growing focus on the continual development of automated instrumentation for the life science industry. Importantly, TTP Labtech uses its consultative experience to help customers develop new applications and techniques, with customer needs forming a key driving force behind its R&D programs.

“We trust the team at TTP Labtech implicitly, they always listen to us.” said Jose Quiroz of Dart NeuroScience LLC. “We have developed such good working relationships with them that we consider them friends – their engineering and support teams regularly visit us to follow-up on our progress. Their applications support has always been second to none.” 

Last year, the company introduced an automated -80°C biological sample management system for biobanking called arktic® and the dragonfly, a new liquid handler specifically developed for screen optimisation. Both have been enthusiastically welcomed by the market and are expected to perform well in 2013. The mirrorball^® antibody discovery system, which was introduced in late 2011 and is the world’s first simultaneous multi-laser scanning system, is also rapidly gaining traction in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors, and will start to significantly impact revenues during 2013. Furthermore, the new high content imager, acumen hci, is extremely well positioned to handle the high throughput imaging and analysis of complex cellular assays, which is now common place in the high content screening market.

This year, the company will look to target the field of molecular biology. “Many of our products are well positioned to provide real value to customers carrying out analysis applications such as next generation sequencing (NGS) and qPCR by improving the efficiency and speed of sample preparation, as well as improving functional genomics studies, for example via automated RNAi screens,” said Sanghera. “With significant opportunities in this space and several other major product developments coming in 2013, these are exciting times for TTP Labtech.”

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