NZP is pleased to announced that it is an official sponsor of the XXIII^rd International Carbohydrate Symposium (ICS2006) to be held in Whistler at the Telus Conference Centre from July 23rd to July 28th, 2006.  Further information can be found at http://www.ics2006.org.  NZP chose to support this conference because it is the acknowledged leading meeting in the rapidly growing carbohydrate, glycotherapeutic and glycobiology sectors.

While NZP has been a supplier of heparin, other glycosaminoglycans and specific marine polysaccharides for many years, it has recently begun synthesising small molecules specialising in monosaccharides and their derivatives.

The construction of NZP’s Specialty Products Facility is now underway.  It is designed for the GMP manufacture of novel carbohydrates, their derivatives and analogues.

The Facility is also suited for the extraction and purification of plant extracts that have a medicinal use, for example products recognised by the USA FDA as botanical drugs. 

 The facility is multifunctional and there is a range of specially designed rooms for individual processing technologies under cGMP conditions that will be auditable by international regulatory authorities.

“The construction of this Facility is a major milestone in the growth of NZP into new business areas”, said the Managing Director, Dr Richard Garland.

The winner of this years University Business Link award is a company that started out in Masseys Old Dairy Building.

A shortage of ingredients for pharmaceutical products in the 1970s saw New Zealand Pharmaceuticals Ltd step forward as an international supplier of bio-chemicals.

The recipient of the University’s 2006 Business Link Award, NZ Pharmaceuticals was founded in 1971 between the freezing industry and Tasman Vaccine Laboratories. Its first contract with a French pharmaceutical company was to process concentrated animal bile into deoxycholic acid – a component of steroid drugs.

The business quickly outgrew its rented laboratories in the University’s Old Dairy Building, but remained in the Manawatu to become a high-tech enterprise with a $25 million turnover under the management of Richard Garland.

It employs more than 90, ranks in the nation’s top 500 companies and, in November, will complete a new factory purpose-built to produce its latest product – complex sugars developed from simple sugars found in prawn shells.

Mr Garland received the Business Link award from Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Warrington at a graduation week function co-hosted by the University and Vision Manawatu. A wide variety of local businesses enjoyed the opportunity to network during one of the city’s busiest weeks.