Biocartis announces restart of its high-throughput cartridge manufacturing line

Following a fire that broke out at one of the Company’s warehouse facilities in Mechelen (Belgium) during the night of 30 July 2021, production at the ML2 line was temporarily suspended due to the need for structural repairs to the building and select supporting systems. Those repairs, as well as several subsequent control and quality-related procedures, were completed earlier this week. This led to the successful restart of the ML2 line in the night of 21 September 2021.

Herman Verrelst, Chief Executive Officer of Biocartis, reacted: “I am very pleased to announce that as from today, commercial cartridge production on the ML2 line has resumed. Our teams have worked tremendously hard to get the ML2 line up and running again after the fire incident. We can be proud of this accomplishment which shows the strength and resilience of our teams.”

Earlier this month, on 2 September 2021 at the announcement of its H1 2021 results, Biocartis had confirmed its 40% cartridge volume growth target for 2021, however subject to the restart of the ML2 line and to the timely availability of reagent raw materials for Idylla™ cartridges in sufficient quantities. With the ML2 line now restarted, the Company is continuing efforts to secure the supply of certain assay-specific reagents, to be able to utilize the full capacity of the ML2 line and to minimize potential temporary unavailability of certain Idylla™ products.