I could say that the last two weeks of December are in many ways the best weeks of the year. The busiest time of the year is just over, it is couple of days slowing down towards the well-earned holidays and the atmosphere is just great. Yet then after the Christmas it is the best days to have a holiday, as phone is not ringing and no urgent emails are dropping to the inbox.
After surviving from the Christmas time dinner tables without any severe gastro-intestinal problems due to seemingly never-ending eating, the air then turns somehow fresher to breath and mind starts to rearrange itself to new thoughts and prepare ourselves towards the New Year. The change from 2019 to 2020 it is not just numbers in the calendar, but it is something mentally cleaning every year, at least to myself.
2019 was again a great year for Admescope; there were lots of work on our both sites, with a 25 % growth in total and a record in terms of a revenue and a profit. We were happy to get great new team members in, expanded our laboratories for both in vitro and in vivo work, and invested to several new high-end analytical instruments, such as Vion IMS-QTof system from Waters, in which the ion mobility feature brings very interesting new possibilities to solve many kind of analytical challenges. Yet, we received accreditation for our rodent facility from AAALAC International, to distinguish the high standards and quality in our animal work. AAALAC International is a private, non-profit organisation that promotes humane treatment of animals through a voluntary assessment and accreditation program.
We released our sixth e-book, focusing this time on aspects of safety metabolism, and it was thanks to our customers, again very warmly received. It has been very nice to hear the highly positive feedback from the readers of the e-books during the past couple of years!
From R&D perspective, we have further expanded our service portfolio for biologics, complementing the structural characterization aspects of proteins/antibodies/antibody-drug conjugates, and adding the assays to investigate biomolecular interactions using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and bio-layer interferometry (BLI), which allow real-time measurement of the binding kinetics and determining affinity at equilibrium. I addition to the work with larger biological drugs, it has been also very interesting to note how much the research focused to peptides has increased at Admescope during the past 3 years, being now about 20 % of all the work we do at our main site in Oulu.
I addition to all research and science we have been busy with back at home facility, there has been also lots of marketing trips and scientific events around the Europe, thanks for the hard work by our excellent marketing & sales team, and thanks to you all people we have met on the road – it has been great events and talks, and it is also always about learning new for Admescope as well.
And finally, not forgetting to thank our wonderful teams in both Oulu and Södertälje, it has been lots of laughter around coffee tables, and on lunches and afterwork dinners, as well as great time in canoeing in Oulu-river and having picnics. All this will continue for 2020, and as the year goes further, it is also time to start planning the 10-anniversary party for the company – it has been quite a road from the start.
Let there be a successful year 2020 for everybody!
Written by Ari Tolonen, CEO
