Vircell has closed 2018 with the best results in its history and faces 2019 with excellent prospects to improve trend growth.
Although everything indicates that the world economy is on the brink of a slowdown period, activity in the health services sector continues to strengthen. Vircell has achieved a total increase in turnover of 16% over the previous year. In 2018, international sales have represented 86% in line with previous years.
In this period the international network of distributors has expanded, managing to penetrate new markets in South America and North America and sales in key destinations for Vircell's growth strategy have been consolidated. All these efforts have managed to maintain a diversified sales mix, with Asia (45%), Europe (35%), America (11%) and the Middle East (9%) as core markets.
The structure of sales by product line in 2018 varies slightly with respect to previous years. VirClia® (20%) becomes the second best-selling line, overcoming ELISA (19%) and AmpliRun® (9%) consolidates its position as the fourth most sold line in our portfolio.
The excellent results achieved in 2018 are indicative of the professionalism of our distributors and the dedication, effort and know-how of our collaborators who work to provide the best diagnostic solutions to our customers in all markets.
In 2019, our efforts will be focused on the promotion of the two new instruments that were presented at MEDICA last November: VirClia® Lotus, which increases capacity and improves turnaround of other devices for the automation of infectious serology by chemiluminescence; and qSPEED-OLIGO®, a revolutionary processor that integrates real-time PCR and identification of positive samples. In addition, we will continue with the expansion in laboratories around the world of our line of molecular controls AmpliRun®.