Brexit driving more work our way, says Irish testing group

IRISH testing firm Complete Laboratory Solutions (CLS) says the threat of Brexit is driving UK business its way.

The Galway-based contract lab says it’s planning to increase its workforce by 50% in the coming two years in part because companies requiring outsourced scientific testing and analysis are dumping UK-based providers and seeking new expertise in the eurozone.

“We see an upside with Brexit because, unfortunately for UKbased companies, from Brexit onwards they won’t be able to release their products into the EU without coming through a nonUK testing house like ourselves,” said Evelyn O’Toole, chief executive of CLS, which she founded 25 years ago in Ros Muc, Connemara.

Ms O’Toole said clients and potential new customers had been contacting CLS since the 2016 Brexit vote and were now “converting” from UK providers.

“We’re scalable and we’re in close proximity (to the UK),” she said. “There’s a good upside.”

CLS currently employs a combined 191 workers at CLS Ros Muc, which supports environmental and food clients, and at CLS MedPharma in Galway city, which opened in 2008 and supports medtech, biopharma and pharmaceutical clients.

Ms O’Toole said CLS would hire 78 more staff, chiefly microbiologists and analysts, at the Galway city site and for deployment into client sites in Cork, Limerick, Dublin, Waterford and Sligo.

CLS Ros Muc will recruit 18 environmental science graduates and food microbiologists, she said, plus four more positions to beef up its marketing, sales and finance units.

CLS made its announcement yesterday as part of the Med in Ireland conference at the RDS in Dublin. Enterprise Ireland gathered leaders from more than 100 of the 300 medical technology companies in Ireland that employ around 40,000 people.

The agency, which encourages growth in indigenous firms in the Republic, said the conference had attracted executives and buyers from companies in 40 countries.