Success is a drug for us
Tyneside & Northumberland winner Dr Roger Duggan, managing director of IDS, Boldon.
IDS, under Dr Roger Duggan, has broken through the £1m profit barrier, the gains having more than quadrupled in the latest annual return.
The firm, which invests heavily in research, makes and markets diagnostic testing kits for clinical and research markets.
Its shares on the Alternative Investment Market ride high, thanks to the firm's double-digit growth.
Dr Duggan worked his way up the small organisation (founded in 1977) and led a management buyout in 1996.
Now the firm is globally recognised for its innovative support to diagnosis of disease. It is developing tests for hospital-acquired infections, such as the superbug MRSA.
Its US arm opened in 2003. In Germany, its largest single European market, IDS GmbH was set up in 2004 when a French subsidiary was launched.
IDS has Queen's Award for Technological Achievement and Enterprise in International Trade. Almost 65% of sales come from overseas.
It dominates the Japanese market, where it is expanding, and is big in Australia and Scandinavia, where it recently bought a Finnish firm.
Dr Duggan, 55, from Swindon, holds a BSc, MSc and PhD from Hull, Leeds and Hong Kong Universities respectively, and a business diploma from Durham University.
He has also been a post-doctoral fellow of Bangor.
RUNNER-UP
FIONA CRUICKSHANK, managing director, The Specials Laboratory, Prudhoe, Northumberland.
THE Specials Laboratory, set up in 1999, is now one of three main players in a UK niche market. It sells unlicensed medicines - or "specials" - into retail, pharmaceutical and healthcare services.
So successful is the business Cruickshank started with technical director Brian Dougherty, that they have recently invested £1m to expand the manufacturing area nearly six-fold to 35,000sq ft.
Around £250,000 was invested in a clean room and £150,000 on a new computer system.
The firm, which delivers about 94% of orders within 48 hours, is strictly regulated by the Medical and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency.
Its staff are mainly recruited within the North-East, and many bring experience from major pharma businesses.
Cruickshank, a trained pharmacist, always wanted to work on the business side.
She was with a major South-East pharmaceutical group for three-and-a-half years when she decided to build a company of her own.
She worked around Britain as a locum, then joined a drugs manufacturer in Cheshire.
After maternity leave, she became managing director of a small specials manufacturing unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.
When the company she was with then pulled out of a development plan she was working on, she used the background she had gained and set up on her own. The story since is one of unbroken success.. She was named North-East Woman Entrepreneur of the Year 2004 and was also a finalist in the Northern region Entrepreneur of the Year Awards.
Her company, whose turnover is nearing double figures in the millions, and whose workforce is nearing three figures, also won North-East Small Business Company of the Year.
RUNNER-UP
IAN SHOTT, founder, group chairman and chief executive, Excelsyn, Newcastle
IAN Shott's young and sturdy business Excelsyn provides business and technology services to companies in health and personal care supply chains.
The £12m group saw a 64% leap in its customer base during the last financial year, and now exports to a dozen countries. Its clients represent 70% of the drugs industry. After years of globetrotting, Shott launched out on his own from a spare room in the family home at Woolsington, Northumberland.
Excelsyn, which employs 120 staff, is built around the 2004 acquisitions of WH Promation and Great Lakes Fine Chemicals, and the formation of Excelsyn Management Consulting group. Raised in Africa, Shott graduated in chemical engineering at Imperial College, London.
He then spent more than 25 years with leading pharma groups.
He had a key role in forming ICI Fine Chemicals and, as general manager, grew turnover to £100m. He then worked on the demerger into Zeneca. He made Lonza profitable and international.
As chief operating officer of Chirex, he transformed a struggling US start-up into a successful £325m company in two years. He led integration with Rhodia and created Rhodia Pharma Solutions in 2002.
