Provalis ceases trading shares

Provalis, the Flintshire-based pharmaceutical and medical technology company, has announced it has ceased trading shares on the London Stock Exchange after approving the divestment of its PB Diagnostics arm to Bio-Metrics for 1.6 million pounds.

The company’s shareholders must now vote over the company’s voluntary liquidation, which would split approximately 1.4 million pounds between shareholders.

The move to fold the company follows problems with its in2it product, a fully-automated diabetes diagnostic kit that had initially received a positive industry response from the US healthcare market.

However, technical problems with the device resulted in “disappointing” sales and while solutions were being devised, the company lost out on revenues and was forced to make redundancies.

In addition, some batches of its Glycosal product were returned during July due to a manufacturing problem, resulting in a further loss of 150,000 pounds.

Last month, Provalis announced that most all of the problems with its in2it device had been solved, but that it no longer had the resources necessary to be able to relaunch the product, having had to close its US operations to effect cost savings. In addition, 33 of the company’s 40 employees had been “transferred out” of the business.

Earlier this year, the company reported in its March interim results that its board had strategies in place that would generate sufficient income to keep the group operating “for the foreseeable future”.