Pharmacists constantly recommend it. Even supermarkets have the right to sell them, for now until the end of the month. Self-tests have become essential for a few weeks and manufacturers are overwhelmed with demand. At NG Biotech, in Guipry-Messac, in Ille-et-Vilaine, the welcome is warm with, above all, a swab in both nostrils! Indeed, there is no question of bringing the virus into research and development laboratories.
The boss, Milovan Stankov-Pugès, is not 40 years old. The Breton SME he manages manufactures the heart of the product: the test strip! “It’s made up of different porous supports and then we’re going to apply different chemical solutions to it.” Then come the very technical stages of drying, cutting and gluing: this is what allows the drops deposited to migrate over the entire strip.
The antibody was coupled by a laboratory technician to a visual marker, colloidal gold. “You have the slightly burgundy color which will allow, when the sample is positive, to display two lines: one at the level of the test line and one at the level of the control line, which is also visible.”
A know-how at the origin of the company created only 10 years ago and which has offered itself, with the Covid, a giant step.
“Before the pandemic, we were 30 employees and we produced around 500,000 tests per year. Today, it’s 5 million tests per month! In two years, we have multiplied our production capacity by 100.”
Milovan Stankov-Pugès, CEO of NG Biotechat franceinfo
Today, the company employs 220 people and continues to hire: 40 more people this week alone.
Newcomers found on the other NG Biotech site, a few kilometers away. A large emergency hangar was installed this summer, where the final packaging of the self-tests takes place at a much slower pace than the production of strips. The schedules, in two 8, are no longer enough. In a few weeks, a night team will inaugurate the three 8, for the moment in a heated marquee.
“You have to be very reactive! We can no longer push the new walls, explains Aldric Laurent, Director of Operations. We won’t be able to hire 800 people either, so we’re starting to transform NG biotech and invest in new resources. With machines, like these baggers, that bag just over one test per second.”
But for the rest, it will require the support of the State. “If we have guarantees, we could have a local production capacity in France which would allow us to be less dependent on productions from abroad in the future”, describes Milovan Stankov-Pugès.
What if the crisis ended tomorrow? The Breton SME has more than one trick up its sleeve, and is preparing to market an innovative pregnancy test: a simple drop of blood taken from the fingertip.