Auckland BioSciences taps nutraceutical market with Christchurch acquisition
An Auckland animal products firm that started out in a shipping container in an abattoir and now sells its bioactives worldwide is expanding into the nutraceutical market.
Rosedale-based Auckland BioSciences, which has been processing animal products for international use for 12 years, has acquired Genesis BioLab, a Christchurch-based manufacturer, a month after it opened a new business and plant in Uruguay.
The Christchurch acquisition would allow it to have a specialisation in the nutraceutical market and expand its business across New Zealand, Australia and South America.
Auckland BioSciences already operates in the bioactives market, with one of its products, animal serum, a key ingredient for cell culture in bio-pharmaceutical manufacturing, medical products and the production of things like vaccines.
“It's just all about taking us into new products and new markets so that we can go faster and faster,” group general manager Daniel Maxwell told The Post in reference to the acquisition.
The outlook for the global bio-industry was positive after two challenging years, he added. The company’s customers are billion-dollar companies.
“Our growth has been driven by doing more; increasing our presence in [the bio industry] and increasing our portfolio within that specific niche of blood-based, animal-based products. The purchase of Genesis marks our first departure from that, taking us from expanding within that fixed global market to entering a brand new one.”
The acquisition will see both companies merge to become a new business unit within the broader organisation, employing 55, and sitting alongside its Australian and Latin American subsidiaries.
“It's giving us 30 years of manufacturing experience,” Maxwell said.
Daniel Maxwell says he finds Uruguay “uncannily like home”.
“With Genesis, we just felt that it gave us the strongest manufacturing capability and the most in depth in terms of making a good product.”
Auckland BioSciences anticipates its pre-tax earnings would rise more than 40% in the 2026 financial year as demand for its serums expanded. It would not share details of its financial earnings, but in 2021, when the company purchased Australia's CellSera, its combined revenue was around the $40m mark.
The acquisitions haven’t stopped. The company opened its new business, MonteSera, in Uruguay in October. Minister for Biosecurity Andrew Hoggard attended the opening.
Maxwell describes MonteSera as “another offering at another price point” for the pharmaceutical space. “There are some things within that business unit in Latin America that also extend to the nutraceutical markets. But that's certainly something to [come] down the line.”
“We’re not selling direct to the consumer, [but] we do have the ability to do that with Genesis, and it's something we're looking at exploring and growing in time. For the meantime, our interest is focusing absolutely on what we're good at which is manufacturing of high value bioactive extracts, either for pharma or nutraceutical.”
“We’re working towards being a company that the country can be proud of; the type of company that we think the country needs - realising the value that is present in our raw materials and our environment, and taking that to the world.”
Auckland BioSciences was started by Dr John and Suzana Chang about 12 years ago, in a shipping container in an abattoir. In Uruguay, its plant is located just down the road from Google.
Maxwell said the country was selected as it was “stable and trustworthy”.
“Uruguay is a fantastic place to do business. It is predictable. It has stable systems and its Free Trade Zone, it gives us the predictability we need to move products easily across all of Latin America. It feels uncannily like home; the same latitude, with the same plants and cattle. They play rugby, not soccer. The only thing different is that everyone speaks Spanish.”
Source - The Post