From $12k to $100m in 10 years

The company has three operations in the US and has just bought a Scottish manufacturing plant, but it’s all driven by New Zealand innovation, with a local R&D team of 70-80.

Managing director and co-founder Dr Doug Cleverly says NZ doesn’t do enough, nor does it sufficiently value our talent for innovation.

He jokes that Argenta started on the back of unemployment -- when he returned from the US and couldn’t find a job that suited him.

“We are a researcher, developer and manufacturer of animal health products. So we do R&D for all the companies selling products to farmers in NZ,” he told Rural News.

“We assist these companies by collaborating; they do the marketing, we do much of the R&D. There probably isn’t a company you could name in the animal health field that we haven’t done R&D or manufacturing for.

“We don’t market the products that we invent for these companies; we let these companies do the marketing. We are a specialist manufacturer and specialist researcher and developer.

“We are quite a major hirer of university graduates in chemistry, engineering, health sciences, veterinarians and suchlike.”

By far the greater proportion of their work is for cattle and sheep, and about 25% for pets.

“Almost every farm in NZ would have products that we have invented on it,” he says. “If it’s a pour-on or a sheep drench, we’ve probably had a hand in developing it and/or making it.

“About 60-70% of [drenches] used on a farm would be made by us. About half the pour-ons are made by us. We make all the big brands.”

He says NZ has unique ability to conceptualise and develop products to meet the needs of farm owners, he says. For them these needs are interpreted by their clients who are the big multi-national companies.

“We started supplying NZ and Australia, but as we have developed our ability to invent new things we have expanded our horizons to the US and now to Europe,” Cleverly says.

“But our ability to develop new product is our strongest point of different. There are a lot of companies which manufacture products but not too many companies specialise in inventing them and developing them and actually manufacturing them.

“NZers have a very keen ability to think laterally and problem solve.”

That ability to problem solve has led to some great companies in animal health, he says. Argenta will employ about 401 people globally as from April 1 when they acquire a company in Scotland which comes with 116 people.

In January 2016, the company opened a new, 13,470m2 manufacturing plant in Fort Dodge, Iowa, to complement its NZ operations and support continued growth in the US. The acquisition followed the company’s opening of a drug product research laboratory in the world-renowned science precinct of Kansas University, Lawrence in 2012, and the purchase of a New Jersey clinical contract research subsidiary, AlcheraBio, in 2008. The company has about 100 employees in the US.

Argenta has now bought the plant and manufacturing operations of Elanco Animal Health in Dundee, Scotland.

The world has three main areas of geographical importance; Argenta is already operating in Asia and Oceania and North America. But having a footprint in Europe is a key.

“We acquired the facility in Scotland to give us manufacturing capacity in the market in Europe,” Cleverly says.

“About 30-40% of the global market is Europe. It is quite significant. The US is the biggest by far and Europe is not far behind. If you look at the globe, we are on the opposite side of it and it doesn’t make a lot of sense shipping everything down here to make something and shipping it back again.”

The key thing that interests him, as a NZer, is our ability to research products and bring them to market.

“This third site for manufacturing… needs products to make. The way we get products to make is to invent them,” he says. “So it means the NZ research effort has to come up with new ideas, new products and new technologies to satisfy the European and all the other markets.

“It has a spinoff benefit for NZ in that it compels us to grow our R&D capability here so we can feed these three factories that we now operate around the world.”

Argenta doesn’t have a problem getting graduates in the fields they need.

“We have hired fresh graduates, we’ve hired people with experience; we have also hired some people from overseas to bring expertise in to seed the knowledge.

“We have a R&D group of about 70-80 people and that’s adequate to support the NZ manufacturing operation,” he says.