Buisness getting choppy stateside for Cambridge Research Biochemicals

Feb 12 2008 by Sue Scott, Evening Gazette

ALMOST 100% of Cambridge Research Biochemicals’ products go overseas.

But business for the Billingham firm - a former ICI company - has been getting choppy in the States.

“The exchange rate doesn’t help, although we’ve always sold in US dollars,” says commercial manager Emily Humphrys.

“The life science market is a major one in America, but it’s got tougher over the last three years. We have seen significant declines in US sales. It used to be 50% of turnover, but it’s not that anymore. We’ve looked at ourselves and said you can’t just have a model that satisfies a few large accounts.So rather than just talking to the top five companies, we’re talking to the top 20.”

Having lost its stateside presence in Willmington, Delaware, when it split from ICI, it’s now taking a long, hard look at how it develops in the US market.

“The difficulty we have is that the US is a big continent and we are not really hitting the middle states where there are some pharma companies and the west coast, which has all the biotech.”

So, it’s looking to partner with other Tees Valley exporters and move further west.

“We are looking to find some way of dealing with American customers, either by having a virtual office or finding a like- minded company that feels too small to pay for a whole office, but wants some presence,” says Humphrys.

“There’s definitely a hindrance to getting a contract if you are not an American company - you have to work very hard to win them over,” she adds, which is why CRB has pegged its pricing matrix for the States at a 1.6 exchange and adopted American customs, even down to using the US paper size.

As Brits, of course, they do have one built-in advantage over home-grown competitors.

“Sometimes they think you’re more intelligent just because you have an English accent!”