Diagnostic specialist Axis-Shield is developing new tests after lifting interim pre-tax profits 125 per cent to £3.6 million.

The Dundee-based company, which makes diagnostic kits for use at the ‘point of care’ in doctors’ surgeries, increased turnover 18.5 per cent to £50.6 million, helped by currency movements on the overwhelming majority of its sales which are overseas. Sales of Afinion, a relatively new product which can test for different illnesses on the same machine and deliver a diabetes result in three minutes, surged 93.4 per cent to £7.2 million, while the older NycoCard, still widely distributed in China, India, Mexico and other markets, increased sales 9.2 per cent to £12.3 million.

Axis-Shield, the product of an Anglo-Norwegian merger and listed on the London Stock Exchange and in Oslo, grew revenues 23 per cent to £12.8 million at its laboratory division, which devises new tests and conducts them for US group Abbott Laboratories and other corporate customers. Third party distribution revenues rose 5 per cent to £15.6 million.

The Norwegian state pension fund is the biggest single shareholder in Axis-Shield, which had 2,500 Afinion systems installed at the end of June and targets 6,000 by the end of the year, half in the USA. The company is developing a new cardiovascular risk marker application for Afinion and has obtained the rights to a new proprietary test for diagnosing sepsis, an inflammatory response to infection, which chief executive officer Ian Gilham says will be introduced in 2011.