FHI member PerkinElmer rapidly ramps up production of corona test kits in Europe

The American company PerkinElmer has managed to convert an existing production facility in Finland in record time so that more corona test kits become available in Europe. Such test kits are necessary to be able to increase the testing regime in the various countries.

Lieke van der Leegte, sales leader Life Science & Diagnostics at PerkinElmer, explains how the rapid scale-up started: “As PerkinElmer, we had already developed a PCR kit for detecting the Covid-19 virus. These were produced in the US and China. There is of course a high demand for these kits and we want to have more control over them in the European region. Export from China is difficult and in the US export is sometimes blocked.”

These delivery problems prompted a rapid search for a solution. This was found in record time, says Van der Leegte: “In Turku, Finland, we already have a production facility for reagents. We then looked into whether they could also produce the corona test kits. Within five weeks, they managed to turn the entire production process around, allowing them to produce these real-time PCR kits. These are already CE-approved. This gives us more control over production and distribution, and a higher production capacity of kits.”

Van der Leegte describes how the coronavirus testing process works with the test kit: “The first part of the test consists of isolating the virus DNA/RNA by means of a swap. This is done with a cotton swab. And there has been a shortage of that in particular. In the second part, the PCR process is used in the lab to check whether the virus is present in the sample.” Testing for the corona virus consists of two parts. First, the virus DNA/RNA is isolated from the swab taken from a patient. Then, a PCR test is used to check whether the sample also contains the Corona virus. For the DNA/RNA isolation, PerkinElmer has the production in Baesweiler Germany and the reagents are produced in Groningen.”

Now that the Netherlands seems to be slowly coming out of lockdown, the demand for test kits is still growing in our country. Van der Leegte has good news for that: “We are also going to supply the Dutch government. Together with three other companies, we are going to supply various hospitals.”