City briefs: Castings; ValiRx
Walsall-based manufacturer Castings has seen profits rise to £16.7m, compared to £12.1m last year, thanks to a strong demand from customers.
The firm saw turnover increase by 35% with the heavy truck OEMs creating 75% of revenue, increasing build rates throughout the year.
Foundry production has also returned to profitability seeing a rise in external sales revenue of £53.4m (36.7%) to £199m.
After nearly 63 years with Castings, of which 40 have been as chairman, Brian Cooke is standing down as a director and will not be seeking re-election at Castings’ AGM in August.
Cooke joined the company from foundry college in 1960 and was appointed a director six years later. Prior to becoming Chairman in 1983, he served as managing director at Brownhills and then as group chief executive.
Chairman, Alan Jonas said: “Brian has led Castings from the front and everything the group does reflects his energy and wise business acumen. We would all like to thank him for his outstanding contribution over the last seven decades. I am very pleased that he has agreed to remain available to consult with the group after the AGM”.
A Nuneaton life sciences company, focused on early-stage cancer therapeutics and women’s health, has acquired the scientific assets of Imagen Therapeutics from its liquidators.
ValiRx has purchased Imagen for £170k, which offers personalised cancer treatment through the collection and use of well-characterised, patient-derived cancer cells.
Samples, collected from patients over a number of years across a wide variety of cancers, enabled Imagen to create a unique ‘biobank’ of human derived cells and provide services to the pharmaceutical industry for pre-clinical screening of drug candidates.
By directly collecting and processing a large number of samples, Imagen was able to build up a collection of cancer cells to attract global clients for its pre-clinical screening business.
It is expected that the biobank and relevant equipment will be transferred and integrated into Inaphaea in MediCity, Nottingham over the next few months.
In addition, ValiRx has secured the consultancy services of co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Imagen, Dr Gareth Griffiths, in order to assist with the establishment of the patient-derived cell line services in the Inaphaea facility.
Dr Suzy Dilly, CEO of ValiRx commented: “We are delighted to have completed the acquisition of the Imagen assets. In particular, the biobank of patient derived cell lines is a valuable resource as it enables Inaphaea to offer screening of a wide-range of oncology drug candidates against patient derived cell lines.
“This is an important step towards our ambition to make our assays more closely aligned to a complex human system, rather than rely on commercially available immortalised cell lines.
“This transaction gives us significant lab equipment at a substantial discount to our budgeted cost for these items had we purchased new, with the cell lines and other IP acquired at modest additional cost. The team did brilliantly to complete this on a rapid timescale, at excellent value for the Company.
“We believe these services will generate near-term market interest and differentiate Inaphaea’s offering. Furthermore, the equipment, acquired at a fraction of market prices, will support both the new cancer drug screening services and Inaphaea’s wider business interests.”
