Best use of IP

Successfully developing and marketing innovative solutions for the prevention and treatment of disease in animals has seen Bomac Laboratories enjoy exceptional international sales growth during the past two years.

Located in Manukau City, Bomac manufactures almost 290 products. It is leveraging off its strong New Zealand base to expand internationally, exporting to 70 countries with major markets Australia, Asia and the Middle East.

Chief Executive Wayne Leech says understanding its customers’ needs drives Bomac’s R&D programme, enabling it to produce products which meet client demands, whether they are veterinarians, farmers or pet owners.

“We take an innovative approach to R&D to provide products which considerably enhance the way the animal is treated, or the way the treatment is given.

“As a result, in a global market dominated by large multinationals, we have a growing reputation for bringing exciting products to market.

“Our products are supported by studies that prove efficacy, safety and residue period, but always with a performance or convenience enhancement over existing products.”

Bomac operates exclusively in the animal health sector and has successfully registered an average of 20 new products each year during the past five years in New Zealand.

The company is acutely aware of the value of its IP, the need to protect it and how to commercialise this asset. Patents are used to protect products in major markets and potential manufacturing locations.

“The heavily regulated environment also provides a degree of protection,” explains Mr Leech.

“It takes three to five years from product inception to market and development costs are high. If we are launching a new innovative product, it takes a long time and high costs for competitors following us to catch up.”A corporate culture of innovation also ensures it keeps moving existing products ahead of competitors.

www.bomac.co.nz

EverEdge IP captures the value of innovative New Zealand thinking and ideas, maximising returns to intellectual property (IP) owners and taking exciting Kiwi inventions to the world.

“Being a supplier of New Zealand IP to the world is a model perfectly suited to our country’s economy as it plays to our strengths and negates our weaknesses,” explains Chief Executive Paul Adams.

“It is very high margin as shipping costs and all issues of distance to market are negated, it has low CAPEX requirements, it encourages innovation, technological development and the retention of intellectual property in New Zealand.”

EverEdge IP has both Proprietary and Advisory sides to the business.

The Proprietary Division spends time researching and developing concepts to commercialise itself, or will develop promising ideas that individuals or clients bring. If the concept has potential, it will licence the IP from the originating source.

A notable success is EverEdge IP’s “CrushPak” packaging technology which has been licensed to the world’s largest dairy company, Danone, for dairy applications in the United States, Mexico, Spain, Canada and Argentina resulting in dramatic sales growth.

“Our Advisory Division helps our clients make money from their ideas,” says Mr Adams. “We have worked with more than 140 companies in New Zealand and internationally, with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to SMEs and individual inventors.

“We provide advice and guidance on all corners of the innovation landscape, including strategy, commercialisation, product development, intellectual property and technical considerations.”

The EverEdge IP team has a blend of expertise combining legal, technical and commercial. Staff have backgrounds in design, engineering, manufacturing, law, intellectual property, finance, marketing and science.

Mr Adams says the company is a leader among a new breed of companies that recognise that intellectual property is the greatest human and business asset.

www.everedgeip.com

The successful commercialisation of its intellectual property (IP) is at the heart of everything plant technology provider Grasslanz Technology does, an approach that is helping it expand rapidly internationally.

Located in Palmerston North, Grasslanz’s products are proprietary cultivars, grass endophytes and outputs from plant biotechnology and genomics research, designed to improve farm productivity.

“These technologies are licensed to seed companies, who deliver them primarily through seed to our end users, who are farmers” explains Chief Executive John Caradus. “Our new products are created by investing royalty revenue into development projects.”

Up to 40 percent of royalty revenues are currently generated from international sales. Key markets are Australasia and the United States, where Grasslanz operates through its subsidiary AgResearch (USA) Ltd.

“In the United States we focus in two areas for the development of new innovations – grass endophytes and white clover cultivars. These are unique and world-leading,” says Dr Caradus.

The company undertakes joint R&D investment with commercial partners in order to provide “market pull”. This includes a significant joint venture with PGG Wrightson Seeds Ltd – Grasslands Innovation Ltd.

The objective of this long-term strategic joint venture is to discover, develop and market forage innovations nationally and internationally. Grasslanz also licenses technologies to all other proprietary forage seed companies in New Zealand.

Dr Caradus says identifying plant technologies, or licences that can be sold internationally, is at the core of what Grasslanz does. Its business model is to retain full or part ownership of IP it creates.

“Our IP is based on years of solid R&D and we have many examples of successful IP commercialisation. For example we funded the development of an endophytic ryegrass seed that is drought and insect tolerant, but that doesn’t have any negative impact on the animal grazing from the grass grown. This resulted in a significant increase in milk production for the farmers that used it.”

The company invests a significant amount of time and effort protecting and managing its IP effectively, including taking out patents to block competitors.

www.grasslanz.com

Telemetry Research is a global leader in implantable solutions for physiological monitoring, supporting research activities in multinational pharmaceutical companies, university and research institutions around the world.

“Our focus is on enabling discovery,” says Chief Executive Simon Malpas. “Specifically, we provide solutions to obtain physiological parameters wirelessly in laboratory environments. Applications include cardiovascular, neuroscience, sleep and behaviour, safety pharmacology and toxicology.”

Established in 2005, Telemetry has had an international focus from the outset. Almost 100 percent of revenue is generated from exports to more than 25 countries, ranging from China and Japan to Iran, France and the United States.

Patenting its technology is considered vital, and Telemetry spends considerable time and effort achieving this.

Mr Malpas says until the formation of Telemetry, the market for these products was dominated by one company.

“We now have clear evidence Telemetry is starting to make inroads into their market share. Investments in R&D programmes traditionally take five to 10 years to produce profits, yet we have been able to achieve sales and profitability after less than four years of activity.”

Telemetry grew out of an R&D programme at the University of Auckland and continues to invest significantly in R&D, which has rapidly led to new product development.

Mr Malpas says the company is at the leading edge of miniaturisation for biomedical applications, adapting some of the rapid developments in telecommunications for Telemetry’s applications.

“Our patented technology platform using inductive power transfer allows ample power to be sent across an air or skin gap to implantable devices. This capability has enabled the development of a family of devices for monitoring a range of parameters. We are utilising our technology platform to develop a human specific application, which in turn is leading to the development of technology capable of powering implantable medical devices.”

www.telemetryresearch.com

With more than 20 years of exporting unique, high quality animal identification products, Zee Tags has built a very strong brand worldwide.

The development and retention of strong intellectual property (IP) has enabled Zee Tags to go beyond straight exporting and gain control of key distribution channels. As a result the company has increased international revenue almost 10-fold in the past six years.

“Our competitive advantages and our investment in intellectual property and new products will ensure that international sales continue to grow rapidly,” says Chief Executive Michael Gardner.

Zee Tags provides tags and tagging equipment – visual and electronic – for most categories of livestock worldwide. Its products offer customers a more user-friendly product at a commercially viable cost, says Mr Gardner.

“Our industry is on the verge of growing significantly and is currently dominated by one company worldwide. Other competitors tend to copy the market leader’s products and try to compete on price. We develop new, unique products and compete based on the benefits of those products.”

Zee Tags recognised early that a proactive IP strategy was critical to its sustained success. It has built up extensive experience in IP protection, and holds a high number of patents.

“We take a planned approach to managing our IP, regularly scanning our competitive landscape to identify issues and opportunities. New product concepts are always assessed in terms of IP issues.”

In addition to growing all markets during the past six years, Zee Tag’s goal has been to gain control of distribution within its key markets; it has achieved this through purchasing its distributors in Australia and the United States.

 “In addition to the administration and production synergies attained through the acquisition, we are now starting to benefit with the direct control over new products being launched into these key markets.

 “We are now investing heavily in R&D, and a programme of new product launches is scheduled to roll out internationally.”

www.zeetags.com