BOOMING drug discovery company Oxford Asymmetry announced pre-tax profits of £1.5m - almost double last year's figure, writes Maggie Hartford.

Sales in the six months to June 30 rose by 65 per cent to £6.1m, and the group has £20.6m of orders.

Oxford Asymmetry, based at Milton Park, near Abingdon, was set up by Prof Steve Davies, of Oxford University, who pioneered a new way of making chemicals with either the right or left-handed versions of molecules.

The two versions react differently in the body, sometimes with bad results.

The university spin-off group also announced nine new contracts to produce compounds for pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies. Subsidiary Oxford Diversity is to get up to £15m over two years, plus royalties of any drugs sold, from Swiss giant Bayer. Other deals involving Biochem Pharma and DuPont have just been signed.

A new chemical produced for US company Eastman has commercial potential, says Oxford Asymmetry. Eastman is paying £2.5m plus royalties over three years. Staff numbers have grown from 151 at the start of the year to 178, and are likely to reach more than 200 by December. Chief executive Edwin Moses said: "The bulk of the workforce has been research scientists, but we are now recruiting more technical staff as well as marketing and sales people, admin and other support staff." The company has outgrown its Milton Park base and is spending £7m on buildings in the next six months, plus another £4m in the first half of 1999. It has an option to expand into a second bigger block with total space for about 450 staff.

Dr Moses said plans and costings were now being drawn up for the second building, which might include a new pilot plant to produce chemicals in larger quantities. It would be available by mid-2000 at the earliest.

The 40 per cent of staff who took up a share options offer have benefited from a 70 per cent hike in the share price to 459p from 290p when the company floated on the stock market in February.

The company is now valued by the City at almost £160m.

Oxford University owns about eight per cent, and Prof Davies's department gets five per cent of profits until the end of the century. In return, the company has the rights to technologies developed in Prof Davies's world-beating chiral chemistry research lab.

Dr Moses said: "Our first few months as a public company have been very successful. We have significantly increased sales and profits and have won several important new contracts.

"With the development of our new facilities and our plans to increase the number of staff proceeding on schedule, we look forward to the next six months with confid- ence."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.