As the world market in animal feed continues to grow, R-Biopharm Rhône, a food safety company based in Scotland, is poised to ramp up its sales of testing kids to Asian markets.
The company, based in the West of Scotland Science Park in Glasgow, has identified major new export opportunities as a new survey showed that global feed production was approaching the one billion metric ton level.
Asia was again the top producer of feed, and China remained the market leader with 189 million metric tons from approximately 9500 feed mills.
However, R-Biopharm Rhône, whose test kits allow food manufacturers and processors to monitor and detect mycotoxins, is concentrating on the Chinese government's new policies to facilitate traceability and improvements in quality.
These policies have led to a reduction in the number of smaller, less efficient feed mills in favour of fewer but much larger mills which can be more easily monitored.
Claire Milligan, Product Manager at R-Biopharm Rhône, said: "Our subsidiary in China is focusing on the animal feed market this year and is closely following the changes being introduced by the government.
"For animal feed there are official regulations in place for one particular toxin, aflatoxin, which is a toxin that has been listed as a potential carcinogen, while for other toxins guidance levels are in place.
"The analysis of these toxins in feed can be difficult as these are complex samples containing many different components therefore our r-immunoaffinity columns are ideal for the clean-up of this type of commodity.
"Our products also offer greater performance meeting China’s increasingly tougher quality checks.”
R-Biopharm Rhône is one of Scotland's most successful exporters of diagnostic test kits, exporting more than 85% of their products to outside the UK.
Its biggest selling products are immunoaffinity columns for the analysis of mycotoxins, which use antibodies to bind and measure elements in samples and operate at astonishing levels of sensitivity, detecting parts per billion.
R-Biopharm Rhône supplies both to food companies which have their own diagnostic laboratories and to private labs serving the food and agriculture industries. It also sells to public sector labs which are engaged in food testing as part of the government's statutory duty to ensure food safety.
