Seegene Inc., South Korea’s largest point-of-care diagnostic kit maker, will supply Covid-19 diagnostic kits worth 16 million GBP ($22.11 million) to Scotland, which will triple shipments to the region from last year.

The biotechnology firm announced Thursday that its Scotland dealership Mast Group began supplying its test kit Allplex™ SARS-CoV-2 Assay to nine major hospitals in Scotland this month under a public procurement agreement. The supply is the largest volume procured by the Scottish government since the pandemic first broke out.

The supply contract would triple sales of 5.4 million GBP in the region last year, Seegene said.

The company’s diagnostic kit, which acquired CE-IVD mark in Europe in June and formal authorization from Korea’s drug regulator in December, is a real-time PCR assay that can identify five targets including four coronavirus genes (E gene, RdRP gene, N gene, S gene) simultaneously in a single reaction tube. It boasts accurate results and maximizes the throughput for high volume testing.

Seegene hopes the supply deal with the Scottish government will lead to additional sales of its multi-diagnostic kit detecting mutant viruses given that the nine hospitals have been fully equipped with its multiplex PCR equipment.

The Korean firm said it also won a public procurement worth EUR 89.3 million ($107.4 million) in Italy on Apr 15.

By Kim Byung-ho and Lee Soo-min

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