Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The firm – called the Pig Improvement Company until last year – believes it could save the US a small fortune in import costs by genetic manipulation, which would make prawns suitable for cooler water.

Currently 80 per cent of America’s prawn consumption is imported.

Researchers at Sygen’s Cambridge R & D laboratory are likely to be in the vanguard of the project.

The humble prawn is no shrimp in terms of market worth: Sygen will be tilting at a sector generating between $6bn and $7bn a year.

While pigs have proved profitable this year, Sygen says it has to think ahead. It is already looking at expanding into cattle and poultry and is also considering breeding cod and trout.

Analysts say the biotech side of the business could be generating half its gross profits within two to three years compared to 6 per cent at present.

The existing business, which supplies pig farmers with selectively-bred pigs, has brought a 40 per cent increase in annual profits.

Despite foot-and-mouth disease, the pretax profit rose for the year to the end of June to £13 million from £9.3million.

Sygen is part of a consortium that received an $8.2 million research grant from the US Department of Commerce to develop innovative biotechnology for application in the shrimp industry.

It intends to exploit its exclusive rights to take the genetic technology to market through its recently established subsidiary, SyAqua.

Chairman Brian Baldock reported the group’s second consecutive year of significant profit growth and said its Asian division had achieved its first annual profit.

Products benefiting from the company’s own higher-margin biotech side, such as identifying disease-resistant genes, were proving increasingly profitable, up by 52 per cent.

Turnover for the year fell to £164.7 million from £175.4 million, though last year’s figures were buoyed by direct sales of surplus pigs, which were unsuitable for breeding stock. The firm’s switch away from rearing pigs itself meant sales fell but profits improved.

Sygen employs 1,100 staff, of which 100 are in the UK. In addition to its European headquarters in Oxford, it has the research and development facility in Cambridge.