In the race to develop medication, test kits and vaccines aimed at COVID-19, Eternal Materials Co (長興材料), a company known for its chemical exports, has emerged as a dark horse.
Its rapid test kit for COVID-19 antibodies was one of the first to be manufactured in Taiwan, and it was used to test people linked to the largest cluster infection of COVID-19 seen in the country back in April.
Eternal Materials has now received formal approval to sell the product in Taiwan, as well as in the EU and several Southeast Asian countries, and it is applying for a permit in the US, company spokesman Liu Bing-cheng (劉秉誠) said.
Photo: CNA
“Without our previous experience, we wouldn’t have had this opportunity,” chief operating officer Mao Hui-kuan (毛惠寬) said in a recent interview, referring to seven rocky years endured by Eternal Materials’ biomedical research team.
Founded in 1964, the company is one of the largest suppliers of synthetic resins and photoresist materials in Asia. It ventured into the biomedical field in 2013, with a focus on test kits.
Although some of its products have proved useful in disease prevention, such as a test kit for dengue fever that the company worked on with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), none of them have been a commercial success.
Photo: CNA
“We’ve struggled a lot,” to the point where management has considered dismantling the department, Mao said.
Yet the team persevered, and the pandemic, despite its adverse impact on the company’s business earlier this year, proved to be an opportunity for its research and development staff to put their expertise to good use.
In March, the CDC contacted Eternal Materials to see if it could develop a rapid test for detecting COVID-19 antibodies. Within 10 days, it had a prototype ready to go.
“We just kept trying and trying and trying,” Eternal Materials chief researcher Wang Hsi-kai (王璽凱) said.
The prototype was just the beginning; researchers at Eternal Materials continued to revise and improve the test kit over the following months.
It was used by the Central Epidemic Command Center in late April to test for antibodies when a cluster infection linked to a navy flotilla emerged.
Five months after the development process officially began, the team settled on a finalized version of the kit and called it the Eternal COVIDual COVID-19 IgM/IgG Rapid Test.
That same month, it became the third COVID-19 antibody test in Taiwan to receive emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.
Results can be seen in 15 minutes, and can indicate whether a person was infected recently or in the more distant past, with an accuracy rate of 98 percent, the company said.
However, other countries started manufacturing antibody rapid test kits months ago, raising questions whether Taiwan might be too late to the game to have an impact in the global market.
Chen Wen-ching (陳玟瑾), a manager in the company’s development department, acknowledges the challenges of being a late entrant, but sees other factors at play, especially quality and reliability.
The market was awash with test kits from China in April and May, but Taiwanese products are popular globally and quality remains the deciding factor whether a product is bought, she said.
“Even though we are a bit late, our products are good,” she said.
The company has already begun selling the test kits in small quantities overseas as it scales up production, hoping to increase its monthly output to 1 million kits by the end of the year, Chen said.
The goal is to produce 3 million test kits a month by March next year, and 11 million per month by the end of next year, she said.
That timetable suggests it might be a while before profits start to roll in, but Mao is not worried.
“It’s still exciting to be able to contribute to society, and be a part of the ‘national team’ that is fighting the disease,” he said.
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