Fish-fitness outfits MSD Animal Health and PatoGgen Analyse are expanding in Scotland and Northern Norway, judging by company communiques and recent hires.
Aalesund-based PatoGen, a biotech outfit that develops and sells “gene technology analysis” used to reduce disease in aquaculture, is expanding its Scottish fish-health services and is looking for a qualified person to sell its services in Scotland.
“Due to an increased demand for PatoGen’s services in the UK, they are establishing a branch in Scotland and hiring,” a statement said. The company, however, appears already to have set up in the brand new European Science Park at Oban, about 100 kilometers northwest of Glasgow, was offered.
Growth trend
Bergen-based MSD Animal Health has promoted one their own from posts in vaccine follow-up, disease-screening and research to a role as account manager in northern Norway, an area of relative fish-farming growth. New MSD head in Norway — the anglophone Dafydd Morris — said in a statement that the company will work with local fish-health inspectors and companies in Norway’s northernmost reaches, where fish-farmers are understood to have extra license capacity and are well-positioned for growth.
MSD also announced it was looking for one extra person to serve clients in Norway’s Far North. The two hires, the company said, would be supported from the company’s core group of bio-tech experts.
Follow-up
PatoGen, meanwhile — with its “modern laboratories for gene technology analyses for detecting fish pathogens” — has spent 13 years developing real-time analysis to detect pathogens in farmed salmon.
The company seeks a “key account” biologist or vet to promote its preventative fish-health plans, train site personnel and do after-sales follow-up likely in the northwestern Highlands and Islands areas, although a modern office on the coast at Oban was offered.
PatoGen Analyse did about EUR 6 million in business in 2016. MSD Animal Health’s achieved a net profit of NOK 21 million (EUR 2.2 million) on EUR 61 million in turnover.
