Medical diagnostics firm creates 242 jobs in Antrim

MEDICAL DIAGNOSTICS company Randox Laboratories is to create another 242 jobs as part of a £15.8 million (€18 million), four-year expansion programme. More than half of the new jobs will require graduate-level applicants.

Northern Ireland’s inward investment and business development agency InvestNI is supporting the expansion to the tune of £2.4 million (€2.75 million).

The company, which has four plants in Antrim and another in Donegal, employs more than 850 people worldwide, 620 of them in the North.

It develops and manufactures diagnostic tests for use by hospitals, clinics and veterinary laboratories, particularly for cardiovascular problems, cancers, diabetes, thyroid problems, liver disease and renal disease.

Some 95 per cent of its product is exported to 130 countries.

Randox has been expanding steadily, beginning with just two employees in 1982. Its headquarters workforce was expanded by nearly 120 in the past two years.

Fifty-five of the new posts have already been filled, with the remainder to be allocated by 2014.

Dr Peter Fitzgerald, managing director, is confident the expansion plans will not be blown off course. “We have always taken a long-term view,” he said.

“We reinvest our profits back into research and development as well as marketing and this enables us, basically, to come up with the best-quality products.”

Randox would not relocate to lower-cost economies in Asia as the balance of skills and labour costs in Ireland suited the company very well, he added.

“We have identified sales opportunities in the rapidly expanding economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China and will be targeting these with our extensive portfolio of products. We also have many new revolutionary products planned for release in 2011 that will make patient testing faster, simpler and more accurate.”

Support for the expansion from InvestNI had a “catalytic effect”, Dr Fitzgerald added.

Minister for Enterprise Arlene Foster praised Randox. “It has grown steadily since it was set up in 1982 and, through a firm focus on research and development, has established itself as a world player with an international reputation for excellence.”