Company History and Development

The company was established by its founders with the support of Brunel University and incorporated in November 2001 at the Brunel Enterprise Centre with the objective of developing commercial prototype HPCCC processors and to begin the journey of exploiting the technology on a global basis.

 

This followed the very successful launch of the International Conference on Counter Current Chromatography in 2000 (CCC 2000) held and hosted at Brunel in September 2000 where the interest and demand for wider use of this technology across a very broad range of applications and users worldwide became apparent.

 

At the time Dynamic Extractions was established, the scientific lead for developing and exploring wider applications and dissemination of this breakthrough technology was led by the Brunel Institute of Bioengineering. At the end of 2007, the company moved to new facilities in Slough; this enabled it to establish its own laboratory and focus on supporting specific customer applications and to broaden the engineering development of the HPCCC processors.

 

The focus of the company at that time was to expand sales of the HPCCC processors. As this was a novel innovation of the technology and revolutionary in the field of counter current chromatography, it quickly found a high level of interest in academic and other research organisations particularly for natural compound separation and purification and the sales of these essentially laboratory based processors increased.

 

By 2011 the Dynamic Extractions HPCCC technology had become the recognised leader and benchmark for HdCCC with processors located in universities and research organisations worldwide, including some of the major multinational pharmaceutical companies.

However, despite the potential of the technology and the early surge of uptake, there were still barriers to the use of the technology as an integral part of mainstream functional compound discovery and development. More importantly, the demands from potential industrial users required revised design and manufacturing considerations for the processors in order to overcome limitations to their use as commercial scale processors in an industrial setting.

 

The company therefore set about reconsidering its strategy and how the business could be developed for the future.

An important part of the future of the technology was to broaden its application and use. The company therefore sought to expand its scientific and technology developments through the assistance of a series of grant funded projects supported in the first instance by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) [now Innovate UK] and subsequently two large European collaboration projects funded under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7).

 

It became clear quite from this series of projects, some of which involved major multinational pharmaceutical companies, that the company needed to reconsider its business strategy if it was to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the outcomes of the projects and to take account of the voice of the commercial customers who demanded more from the design and manufacture of the processors. The changes in the global economy were also by this time having an impact on the traditional sales approach that had been used up to this point and so this too needed reconsideration.

 

In 2013, the company therefore redefined its strategy, implemented the immediate changes required and implemented a reinvestment programme with the support of its existing shareholders as well as some new investors to begin a complete restructuring of the business.

 

The keys to the future of the business lay in its core skills of scientific and technological innovation: there were two activities which didn’t fit these core skills and diverted a huge amount of energy and resources. Together, these non-core activities were not only a distraction but also hugely inefficient and an unnecessary risk to the core business.

 

The first activity to be separated was contract manufacturing. It was and remains a very important part of an integrated portfolio as it derives from the core scientific, application, technology skills and knowledge base. This activity however requires a very different business model and skill set: A new venture was therefore set up, independently funded and operated in which Dynamic Extractions are a founder and stakeholder.

 

The new business, BioExtractions Wales Ltd., acquired a site in Blaenau Gwent (Wales) which became the home for both companies, provided the location and expansion space for the future and opened many other opportunities through schemes supported by the Welsh Government.

 

Dynamic Extractions started the relocation of its scientific activities to the new facility in Wales at the end of 2015 and the relocation of all company activities was completed in January 2016 at which time the Slough facility was closed.

 

The second activity to be considered was the manufacture and assembly of the processors. Historically, the company had been built up around the design and manufacture of the technology in house but this was not sustainable.

 

Processor design and manufacture could not be considered in the same way as contract manufacturing as it is a far more complex undertaking. This activity requires both highly specialised technical engineering and instrument/processing machine design skills as well as an understanding of the high precision applications the processors are used for in laboratory and industrial settings.

The company therefore set out to find a partner who could meet all the necessary technical engineering criteria, have the infrastructure to both scale the activities in line with the company’s objectives and be able to work with the company in managing the complex supply chain involved.

 

It was not by coincidence that the partner company is located in Wales: The partner company, Eurocaps Ltd, is a contract provider of specialised pharmaceutical products and services; the Dynamic Extractions processors are manufactured at their high precision engineering facility in Pontypridd. Eurocaps have been manufacturing the Spectrum range of HPCCC processors since the relocation in 2015 and since that time contributed significantly to design and manufacturing improvements, the development of a new range of processors to be launched in 2017/18 and the creation of new IP.

 

Dynamic Extractions are now firmly established as part of the Wales based high technology community and received a prestigious Innovation Award for Export Achievement from the MediWales Life Science Network in December 2016. The company subsequently went on to represent MediWales as a finalist in this category at the National MediLink UK awards in April 2017.