Hygiene group sees orders soar and announces partnership to serve hospitals
Byotrol, the Daresbury-based hygiene products group, said it has seen a “very substantial increase in demand” for its full range of infection prevention and control technologies over the past seven weeks.
It says this follows broad recognition of the coronavirus outbreak in Europe.
This means the results to March 31, 2020 are now expected to exceed the guidance given at the time of its interim results, where it confirmed its expectations of positive EBITDA for the full year.
The business said: “The exact outturn will depend on the extent to which we can complete orders before the cut-off on 31 March.”
Byotrol has also announced an agreement with Newmarket-based infection prevention and contamination control products maker Tristel regarding products aimed at hospitals.
Firm orders for Byotrol currently sit at £1.7m for deliveries to end of June, with many more orders still being processed. Historically, the order book at this time of year has been around £350,000.
Byotrol said it been working very hard with its contract manufacturers to increase availability of its products and satisfy the exceptional demand.
But it acknowledges that these manufacturers have, themselves, all been dealing with supply chain constraints, initially and especially in packaging materials – most of which originate in China – and increasingly now in commodity chemicals as the crisis accelerates.
Today’s trading update said: “We will update the market in more detail after year end, together with further commentary on the order book for the first quarter in the new financial year, which at present is looking substantial and continues to grow.
“We are also focusing on delivering longer-term supply contracts and licenses, such as the deal announced with Tristel this morning, which is an excellent opportunity for the company. The outlook for financial year 31 March 2021 is already looking encouraging.”
Tristel has entered into a ‘know-how’ licence and commercial collaboration with Byotrol. This relates to the joint development of a biocidal formulation and Byotrol’s development of two additional biocidal products and formulations that will be supplied and licensed to Tristel.
The formulation will create a unique surface disinfectant product for hospitals by combining the two companies’ core technologies.
Paul Swinney, Tristel chief executive, said: “Tristel and Byotrol are both specialist infection prevention companies, and in recent years we have forged a close working relationship.
“This collaboration holds great promise for both businesses. For Tristel it provides us a future-proofed intermediate grade disinfectant that we will incorporate into our hospital surface disinfectants product portfolio.
“The second key element of the arrangement is that we will combine a sporicidal high-performance disinfectant, which has an unrivalled kill time, with long-lasting disinfection activity that is proven to last for eight hours in accordance with PAS2424, a test developed with BSI and currently under detailed review by the EU for EN status.
“This combination of technologies creates a ground-breaking proposition. It is akin to clearing a crowd out of a stadium in 30 seconds and then keeping the doors closed to stop anyone re-entering. We must caution, however, that adoption of new infection prevention technology is often slow in healthcare, as both our companies know from first-hand experience.”
Byotrol chief executive David Traynor said: “The Byotrol team is working very hard with customers and suppliers to meet the huge demand for our excellent infection control products.
“We are currently selling everything we can make, and are investigating every opportunity to increase capacity further.
“We believe that infection prevention and control technologies are set to become ever more important in today’s world, even after COVID-19 is brought under control.”
Byotrol also announced this morning that it has appointed Crowe as its new auditor with immediate effect, replacing Mazars.
