It feels like a race against time. Since the emergence of the fifth wave of Covid-19, the NG Biotech company, located in Guipry-Messac (Ille-et-Vilaine), has been under the control of its self-tests revealing an infection with the virus in a few minutes. “No one anticipated Omicron. As we face this new epidemic peak, self-tests are asserting themselves as one of the solutions to the management of the pandemic. We must take up the challenge of producing more and immediately on French soil ”, says Milovan Stankov-Pugès, CEO of the Breton SME.
This Thursday, January 6, the thirty-something moves quickly through the workshops of his company in which white coats are busy assembling some 120,000 self-tests daily. In December 2021, the company shipped 2.5 million pieces, mostly to French pharmacies. NG Biotech aims to double its production in February. Machines are no longer sufficient to cope with such a pace. The company needs arms, in particular to insert, in each plastic box, a strip of paper treated, cut and assembled beforehand in Guipry-Messac, capable of revealing a virus infection from a nasal sample.
The SME of thirty employees before the pandemic now has more than two hundred employees, including fifty on permanent contracts. On Monday January 10, forty new operators are expected. Six temping companies were commissioned to recruit at least as many the following week. “We need to move to a three-eighths organization by the end of the month. We are working on the composition of the night shift, assures Aldric Laurent, industrial director, a former aeronautic hired in May 2021. Next week, we are going to set up a 150 square meter barnum to set up a new kitting shop. “
“Flexibility”
This step, which consists of packaging five self-tests, as many swabs and solutions to dilute the samples as well as instructions for use, constitutes the production bottleneck. Despite the support of local subcontractors and the affirmation of a partnership with Boiron for successful packaging and marketing of the boxes, NG Biotech still has to push the walls in Guipry-Messac.
Milovan Stankov-Pugès shrugs his shoulders as if it were an exercise he is no longer familiar with. At the heart of the first containment, in 2020, the manufacturer took the gamble of building a second factory, a stone’s throw from the first located on the edge of the expressway connecting Rennes and Redon. “One Sunday noon in April, at aperitif time, I called the mayor to ask him if there were premises available in the town. The next day, he presented me with a site with a concrete slab of 2000 m². Eight weeks later, the factory was built, remembers the Breton boss. The local elected officials, the prefect, the president of the region… everyone made our work easier to allow us to acquire the agility and flexibility necessary for our growth. “
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