Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

speakup

Two New Brunswick companies are among the four fastest-growing in Atlantic Canada, according to an annual survey by Progress magazine.

Fredericton biotechnology firm LuminUltra Technologies Ltd. and Miramichi's Fatkat Animation Studio finished third and fourth in the survey, which ranks 35 companies by revenue growth over the past three years. The results were announced at a reception Thursday evening at the Ramada Crystal Palace hotel in Dieppe.

MedicLINK Systems Ltd., an information technology company from St. John's, N.L., took top spot, posting 1,657-per-cent growth to revenue of $650,000. Altius Minerals Corporation, also of St. John's, finished second, seeing its revenue jump to $52.8 million.

LuminUltra was close behind, with a 1,400-per-cent increase to $750,000, while Fatkat grew by 1,025 per cent to more than $3.9 million.

"The Fastest Growing Company ranking identifies the region's high growth up-and-comers, and it also highlights the steady growth performers," Progress editor Pamela Scott Crace said in a release.

LuminUltra formed in 2004 with a patented product that measures bacteria in water. It uses an enzyme found in the tails of fireflies, known as luciferase. The enzyme reacts with energy in bacteria and produces light, which can be measured to determine bacteria levels.

"Initially we were targeting the industrial market, then we realized it applied to drinking water, sewage treatment, beaches, oceans, lakes," said Patrick Whalen, vice-president operations for LuminUltra, which has 10 employees in Fredericton.

Whalen said it could even be used to avert situations such as the Walkerton, Ont., water crisis of 2000, during which seven people died from drinking contaminated water.

"You name it, we can test it," he said. "And the reason we are here today is that all the conventional tests take days to get results back, ours takes a couple of minutes."

He attributed the strong growth to a new distributor in Paris, which signed on in the past year and is responsible for about half the company's business. That's allowed LuminUltra to access clients in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, building on an existing North American base that includes customers like the cities of Boston and New Orleans.

Those big names should laid the foundation for more growth down the road, said Whalen.

"I see that $750 (thousand in revenue) turning into $1.5 million," said Whalen. "It's a lot easier if I say I've got the City of Boston (as a client), rather than Acme Industries in God-Knows-Where, Indiana."

Meanwhile, FatKat, which was the third-fastest-growing company in last year's survey, tied for the second-greatest employee growth, a 300-per-cent increase to 100 employees. FatKat, Atlantic Canada's largest animation studio, was established in 2003 and has developed animated cartoons for Nickelodeon and the British Broadcating Corporation.

Rounding out the list are three other companies from Newfoundland and Labrador, seven from New Brunswick, and 21 from Nova Scotia.

Bulletproof Solutions of Fredericton (14th), Cooke Aquaculture Inc. of Blacks Harbour (15th), Invescor Inc. of Moncton (21st), Major Drilling Group International Inc. of Moncton (22nd), Plazacorp Retail Properties Ltd. of Fredericton (24th), Campbell's Auto Sales of Riverview (25th) and Focus Logistics Ltd. of Moncton (26th) were the other New Brunswick companies.