By Steve Best
Over the past 30 years New Zealand Medical and Scientific (NZMS) has evolved from a small medical supply company based in Auckland to a Trans-Tasman operation with a raft of products and services covering the medical, pharmaceutical and scientific sectors.
Owner and managing director Richard Plowright had many years’ experience in pharmaceuticals and had always been interested in medicine and things medical.
“I was working in the early days of haemodialysis, wonderful times with the scope to do many things. I started in Christchurch – which was the only dedicated training area back then for patients to go home on haemodialysis,” he says.
In 1982 Mr Plowright decided to start his own business, starting up under the company name Saramed Services and the initial business grew from haemodialysis products to diversify to include such products as insulin devices as well. In 1987 Bernie Croft came on board as a fifty percent shareholder and his previous involvement in the diabetes area and the pharmaceutical sector was an ideal fit as the company increased its range of medical products and services. Mr Croft retired last year after a major and lasting contribution to the company.
Representing Amicon in New Zealand from 1985 initiated the scientific element of the business that has continued to this day.”We took over Amicon’s molecular separation business in Australia and distribution in New Zealand. We were looking to build in the scientific area and in 1988 began in the microbiology range – based on agar media for analysis of bacteria on surfaces,” Mr Plowright says.
Microbiology then became another established component of NZMS’ business and from this the majority of the scientific division products are based – from medical wire swabs to advanced pathogen detection using PCR technology.
“The old ways of testing took up to seven days,” Mr Plowright says.
The products on offer from NZMS for hygiene and pathogen detection range from ten seconds to 48 hours, a marked improvement on traditional methods, providing customers with the ability to release product to the marketplace a lot faster.
“That really got us started in rapid testing methods. Microbiology is a traditional science but we’ve pushed hard to have new methods accepted with a progression of instruments and technologies to detect food pathogens,” Mr Plowright says.
One of the most notable shifts to new technology has been the adoption of the Assurance GDS Pathogen Detection platform into almost all New Zealand commercial testing laboratories. Initially the primary focus for this particular platform was to test export meat products for E.coli O157:H7 prior to its export to the US market. The PCR based platform is also capable of testing for salmonella and listeria and this will be where they hope to expand the product and its testing base.
NZMS’s scientific division manager Katherine Campbell points out that hygiene monitoring and testing for food safety has always been a necessity for food producers, and NZMS has constantly strived to find new methods and new products to ensure that safety standards, as well as regulations and export requirements are met.
“But allergen detection is now fast becoming a hot topic,” she adds.
“It is now common to test for traces of allergens in the production environment and we have brought new suppliers on board which enable us to offer great test kits for this purpose.”
Mr Plowright points out that diversification has always been the cornerstone of NZMS’ business and a recent comprehensive rebrand of the company reflects the many divergent sectors that NZMS works in.
“We decided to freshen the company’s look. We’re in so many areas and nobody really connected the dots. We were providing a fantastic service but NZMS itself wasn’t being recognised as the conduit for that.”
The rebrand doesn’t solely rest on a more dynamic logo. All of the NZMS’ various divisions in New Zealand– point of care, medical, scientific, pharmaceutical and medical aesthetics – are distinct in themselves by virtue of a particular coloured logo – but fall within the NZMS banner.
That was done to reflect the unique nature of each division and as marketing services manager Hugh Plowright says: “We needed to balance how much we were pushing our brand and how much we were pushing our products’ brands. We needed to get ours out there more.”
In recent years NZMS’ business across the Tasman has increased and now employs 45 people covering all of Australia.
“Australia is challenging,” Mr Plowright says.
“It is obviously geographically larger and more spread out than New Zealand and the various states have different rules and regulations. But it is a big market, which gives us a lot of added strength.”
While diversification in sectors where technological advances are commonplace has been a focus for NZMS, Mr Plowright points out that other factors have helped in the company’s 30 years in business.
“We pride ourselves on the expertise of our staff. We make a huge investment in training. That’s always had a lot of emphasis, so the expertise can then be provided in the marketplace. We’ve been fortunate to have had an extremely low staff turnover. We’ve also worked closely with commercial laboratories and we like working with local companies.”
