Manufacturing capacity
Novacyt is focused on managing what it believes will be a period of sustained, significant demand for its COVID-19 test. The value of the current order book, anticipated sales contracts and the growing number of potential orders means further significant commitments to manufacturing capacity are being made.
Further to the announcement on 30 March 2020, Primerdesign has now achieved the target run-rate of manufacturing its COVID-19 test at a rate of four million tests per month. To continue to meet demand, the Company is working to further increase this manufacturing capacity and has signed manufacturing partnership agreements with BioPharma Process Services Ltd and Biofortuna Limited, both based in the UK, to support its existing partnership agreements. In addition, Novacyt continues to scale-up its own production at its Primerdesign site in Southampton, UK. With this additional capacity, the Company expects, over the next three months, to increase production of the test to approximately eight million tests per month.
As part of Novacyt’s ongoing evaluation of additional capacity options, the Company is also in discussions with further potential UK-based manufacturing partners.
In order to manage and support the planning, procurement and logistics for this capacity increase, Novacyt has engaged Chartwell Consulting, a specialist in rapid process improvement (www.chartwell-consulting.com). Chartwell has a team of senior consultants working within Novacyt to assist with the management of the scale-up plans to help deliver the planned increases in Primerdesign’s production, and supply chain capacity.
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Given the planned increase in production, the Company has begun ordering additional raw materials to support this expansion. The Company is also expanding its key raw material supplier base for its COVID-19 test. Currently there are a total of 76 components required for its COVID-19 test and Chartwell is helping the Company to identify additional suppliers in order to develop a long-term and sustainable supply of its kits at this volume.