Byotrol’s sales triple to £3m

BYOTROL – the North West company pioneering technology to kill bacteria such as MRSA and E.coli – has witnessed a year of progress which has seen its sales triple and its losses fall.

The AIM-listed Manchester company achieved revenues of £3.1m in the year to the end of March, up from £930,000 in 2009 and cut its loss to £1.8m from £2.97m.

The business has benefited from fears concerning swine flu and its anti-viral hand mousse has been sold by retail giant Boots as an own-brand product.

It also signed an exploratory agreement for a consideration of $250,000 (£170,000) with a major USA-based multinational consumer products company to produce surface wipes and liquids.

Chairman Ralph Kugler said: “The board believes that the group is in a much stronger position than it was a year ago.

“A number of new business opportunities are in development and the timing of these will affect the group’s cash requirements which are constantly closely monitored by the board.

“The current outlook is promising, despite the continuing general economic uncertainty.”

The company’s new chief executive Gary Millar also hailed the success of trials which have taken place over the past year at Manchester Royal Infirmary.

These showed Byotrol to be superior to the current NHS Gold Standard for disinfection in what is believed to be the largest comparative study of disinfects conducted in the UK for 20 years.

Byotrol has also conducted successful trials of its products over the past year with Marks and Spencer

Mr Millar said: “In the middle months of 2009 the potential of an H1N1 (the swine flu virus) pandemic created a sudden upswing in interest and demand for our products in this market, especially for hand hygiene. 

“The Group was capable of responding rapidly to increases in demand that took place within days.

“By having strong arrangements with key contracted suppliers we were able to meet orders that others, constrained by internal capacity, were not.”

Byotrol has also had the first Halal hand hygiene system approved by the European Halal Development Association.

The company said Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith had stood down as a non-executive director in May as his appointment to the Cabinet of the coalition government required him to relinquish all outside interests.