Micro Identification Technologies Inc., developers of the MIT 1000, a patented microbial identification system that can identify bacteria faster and less expensively than any other method available, today announced that it is making significant progress in the production of the MIT 1000. This is important, since demand for the revolutionary system, already used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Japanese Ministry of Food Safety, has been building. Their success in growing manufacturing capability is due largely to the company’s recent manufacturing alliance with OSI Optoelectronics (OSIO), a subsidiary of OSI Systems (NASDAQ: OSIS), to produce the MIT 1000. OSIO has manufacturing facilities in California, Malaysia, and India.
There’s nothing like the MIT 1000. It can identify a wide range of potentially dangerous bacteria in minutes instead of days, without chemical or biological agents, without fluorescent tags, gas chromatography, or DNA analysis, saving money as well as time. With the increased calls for food safety, revenues for rapid testing methods have expanded at an annual rate of over 9% since 1998, and already exceed $5 billion annually. Current growth projections are at 10.2% annually, reaching $6.2 billion by 2013.
MIT’s Executive VP and COO, John Ricardi, commented on the manufacturing progress. “All of OSIO’s world class facilities are ISO 9001:2000 certified, FDA registered and GMP compliant making them the perfect company to fabricate MIT’s systems for food safety applications as well as planned pharmaceutical and clinical diagnostic applications. While we are predicting quantity deliveries of the MIT 1000 System by the end of this year, initially the systems will be built in OSIO’s California facility, as volume increases, fabrication will move to one of their lower cost overseas facilities enabling MIT to improve future profit margins.”
To help fund the growth, MIT has entered into a three-year $5 million equity agreement with Boston-based private equity firm Dutchess Capital. MIT CEO, Michael Brennan, stated, “We have been very pleased working with Dutchess, which has an excellent track record in the investment banking industry and has been a leading provider of private equity for over 10 years. Their successful background was the primary reason we selected them to be one of our partners.”
For more information, visit www.micro-identification.com.
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