opTricon becomes Chembio
The American diagnostics company is buying the measurement device manufacturer and is planning to build its European HQ in Adlershof
The opTricon GmbH develops and manufactures measurement devices for quick testing. The company has now been bought by one of its largest customers. The American diagnostics company Chembio Diagnostics Systems is planning to build its European HQ in Adlershof.
The small, colourful plastic cuboids on the conference table at Chembio Diagnostics Deutschland GmbH, which is what opTricon will be called in the future, look relatively insignificant. They only weigh about 60 grams. This is less than a bar of chocolate, as Lutz Melchior points out with a chuckle. The secret of the so-called Cube Reader is hidden inside it. The miniature mobile reading devices for quick tests are applicable to all common strip test formats, which are applied in many different fields, including medicine, food, veterinary medicine, environmental technology, and even law enforcement. Their specialty: even very low analyte concentration yields accurate test results.
Lutz Melchior, his business partner Volker Plickert, and their opTricon development team are the fathers of the Cube Reader, which is probably the smallest reading device in the world. The family also includes its bigger brother, the measurement device opTrilyzer Med. The two engineers founded the opTricon GmbH after the German semi-conductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies AG closed their factory in Berlin in 2005. Since the two started the company with a long-standing work colleague from Infineon in the Technology Park Adlershof, the high-tech company has seen continuous growth. The rented space at the Centre for Optics and Photonics on Schwarzschildstrasse has quadrupled to 500 sqm, while the staff number, at 20, increased sevenfold.
In mid-November 2018, the device manufacturer had reasons to celebrate: the publicly listed US company Chembio Diagnostics Systems, a market leader for point-of-care testing in infectious diseases, had bought opTricon. ‘We first met the vice-president of Chembio, Javan Esfandiari, at a trade fair in Dubai in 2011,’ Plickert remembers and adds, ‘where he ordered our device on the spot.” The companies have been in close cooperation since 2015. ‘The Americans wanted an affordable reading device for quick tests in developing countries. The Made in Germany brand was very important to them. That’s how we came to develop the Cube Reader,’ says Plickert. In 2015, they applied for approval in the US.
To date, several thousand readers were shipped out every year. According to Chembio’s plans, they will be sold in a package with the company’s immunological quick tests. To ensure the company’s continued growth, selling it was a logical consequence for Melchior and Plickert as well as opTricon’s main shareholders Ventegis Capital AG and IBB Beteiliungsgesellschaft. Melchior: ‘Our customer has become our buyer and is now complementing their own product portfolio.’ Plickert agrees: ‘Selling the company was the best possible solution. It’s a perfect match.’
It was important to Melchior and Plickert to keep the company’s HQ and its staff in Adlershof. Their new owners confirmed this. The two engineers had less sleepless nights since then. Asked about the next steps, they cite investment into sales and marketing resources. opTricon will be expanded and turned into the Chembio Excellence Centre for optical technologies and the European headquarters.
The Adlershof-based developers will continue to be an original equipment manufacturer, or OEM. Over 100 customers are already using the mobile measurement devices. Chembio’s core business will continue to be diagnostics, which is underscored by their activities in Berlin-Brandenburg’s diagnostics network. The device developers are also open for new ways of application. ‘The Cube Reader can be adapted to any kind of quick test,’ says Melchior.
By Sylvia Nitschke for Adlershof Journal