Mainboard-listed Techcomp (Holdings), the manufacturer and distributor for healthcare, scientific and life science instruments, has announced plans to expand its market presence in the healthcare laboratory market in China.

Techcomp says it plans to establish a separate division in its sales channel for the healthcare laboratory market as management believes that this will become another important growth driver for the group in the coming years.

In addition, the group will be looking to invest more into the R&D activities for new proprietary products.

According to a Deutsche report dated 25 August 2010, China’s medical device market is worth US$26 billion ($5.1 billion) in 2010, reaching US$62 billion by 2015. The diagnostic market alone has been estimated to be US$4.4 to US$5.9 billion and the IVD market to be around US$1.8 billion in China.

The report also highlighted that China medical equipment market is highly fragmented with over 13,000 manufacturers with intense competition among domestic manufacturers in the low-end equipment market, while global players dominated the high-end market.

Techcomp’s move follows the success of its manufacturing division in producing the biological safety cabinet, which was widely used in hospital labs across China. The group has plans to inaugurate a new facility to ramp up its production capacity in October 2010.

New diagnostic products in the pipeline
Techcomp says it will be launching its new line of healthcare laboratory micro-plate reader and washer, Virto Diagnostic, which will be CE marked and will obtain the medical licence for the Chinamarket in the coming months. These new products are widely used for clinical diagnostic tests.

The group is also developing a proprietary Automatic Immunoassay System which is used for the clinical diagnostic market as well.

Its French subsidiary is also finalising the prototype for a healthcare product for the blood banking preparation market and plans are in the pipeline to launch the new product by early 2011.