Randox became one of the so-called winners of the pandemic, making a fortune from testing and increasing its brand recognition. Photograph: Alan BetsonThe Antrim-based company that made hundreds of millions from Covid-19 contracts wants to normalise private health testing
Peter Fitzgerald, a scientist, founded the company 40 years ago, leading Randox as it outgrew its original office in a former chicken shed. The company expanded to distribute its products to test for everything from diabetes to infectious diseases in more than 145 countries, before investing in novel diagnostics.
Randox always had a plan to expand its health clinics. But it had far less money to fund its ambitions, making a loss of £12.5 million in the 18 months ending in June 2020, and a profit of £167,000 in the period before that. After winning 22 UK government testing contracts totalling £469 million, plus revenues from its private Covid testing business , Randox generated a pretax profit of £275 million in the year to June 2021.
It was Saturday January 26th, 2020, when Fitzgerald says his son showed him a news report of the Chinese government stepping up its response to the novel coronavirus. The following day, Fitzgerald sent his scientists into the lab to develop a test. Randox says Paterson asked the UK government for a virus sample to check the test but, in the end, procured one itself.
Rival private labs were disgruntled that Randox won not just the initial contract, but another one in October, when they felt equally prepared to meet the challenge. Ultimately, the UK government struck contracts with 10 other private testing providers. Fitzgerald says the NHS is too fragmented to meet the demand and had to focus on looking after Covid patients, as well as its regular blood testing. “I suspect [the Department of Health] did the right thing to set up labs and engage whatever private sectors could respond,” he adds. “We did investment ourselves. We weren’t getting investment from anybody else to do it.”
It was a situation with “no rule book to go to [and] no blueprint”, adds Campbell. “They were asking us to set up something that’s never been set up before,” he says. “I don’t know what due diligence you do apart from looking at the organisation, meeting the people, and having a belief that they have the passion to drive it through.”