Eurofins 2017 Highlights
2017 was a big year for Eurofins both here in New Zealand and around the world. The company continues to expand the number of laboratories and the number of tests offered by each laboratory. Unlike our global competitors, Eurofins focus remains solely on serving the laboratory testing market.
Internationally
In late 2017 Eurofins celebrated its 30 year anniversary since the first lab started and 20 years since the company went public. Eurofins Scientific was founded in 1987 with 10 employees to market the SNIF-NMR technology, a patented analytical method used to verify the origin and purity of several types of food and beverages and identify sophisticated fraud not detectable by other methods.
Today, the Eurofins Group has over 400 laboratories across 42 countries, staffed by over 30,000 laboratory focussed personnel. Together we offer over 150,000 validated analytical methods. During 2017 over 50 companies were acquired with three new countries added: Slovenia, Estonia and Lithuania. The Eurofins share price went from €411 to €508 which is more than $NZ850 per share! The long term objective for 2016 was to double revenue to €4 Billion by 2020, but this will very likely be achieved during 2019 - a full year ahead of the target.
The Eurofins Fact Sheet is always changing and there is also a really good video about Eurofins that you can watch here.
Nationally
One of the biggest highlights for all the staff in New Zealand was our donation of over $NZ 40,000 to charities as part of our 30 year anniversary. Donations to KidsCan and Garden to Table will be followed up during 2018 with staff being released on full pay so they can volunteer with these organisations. The local donation was part of a global donation of €1 million (over $NZD 1.6 million).
The Eurofins focus on Testing for Life is one that all staff across all Eurofins labs are committed to. New tests being offered around the country include asbestos which is tested in our new Christchurch
laboratory, and we continue to expand our food and contaminated land offer.
Locally
For Eurofins-ELS the year was also one of our biggest ever. We saw unprecedented growth in our Wellington lab and opened a new laboratory in Dunedin in August. This new laboratory will serve the needs of local councils and all our Southern customers.
We expanded our accredited test offering to include a full range of GC:MS/MS and LC:MS/MS pesticides. We have increased our metals testing scope to include a larger range of food metals, and now have one of the largest fleets of ICP instruments in the country. On the microbiology side, we rolled out a ground-breaking new technique developed by Eurofins called BACGene which we use to test listeria and salmonella in food samples.
In response to the Havelock North water contamination, we began offering sampler training courses for all our customers who collect drinking water samples. We will continue this training through 2018.
Our staff have not been forgotten either. During 2017, Eurofins-ELS developed and presented a Future Leader training course and added more staff to the High Potential training course that is operated around our Asia Pacific labs. Over 30% of our staff are currently undergoing formal laboratory focused training.
