MariCal Announces Strategic Alliance with ACD Pharmaceuticals AS
Date: September 5, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 05, 2006
MARICAL ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC ALLIANCE WITH ACD PHARMACEUTICALS AS
Portland, Maine, USA – MariCal Senior Vice President, William T. Thomas announced today the forming of a strategic alliance with ACD Pharmaceuticals AS for the exclusive representation of MariCal’s proprietary smoltification technology, the SuperSmolt® Program, in Norway.
MariCal, a privately-held aquatic life science biotechnology company headquartered in Portland, Maine, serves the global salmon aquaculture industry in solving aquatic health, nutrition, and production issues.
ACD Pharmaceuticals is a Norwegian-based company owned by Nordly Holding AS, and with eight sister companies; Europharma AS, Europharma Nordic AS, Europharma Chile S.A., Havsbrun Norge AS, Polarfeed Drift AS, Abelvær Marine AS, Prepare AS. Nordly Holding AS with subsidiaries’ primary market focus is serving the salmon and marine aquaculture industry in Norway and Chile with vaccine distribution and fish health products, fish feed, services in production of salmon/trout
Mr. Thomas expressed, “MariCal has successfully licensed our smoltification technology for application to over 54 million smolt with the leading commercial salmon aquaculture companies in Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Chile and North America. This strategic alliance with ACD Pharmaceuticals, given their unique market position, exceptional reputation for product, technical support and customer service will significantly strengthen our support to the growing demand for the SuperSmolt® Program in the Norway market.”
The SuperSmolt® Program, a combined water treatment and specialty feed process is applied to juvenile salmonids pre-acclimating the fish to seawater while the fish remain in freshwater prior to their transfer as smolts to sea cages.
“This strategic alliance allows us to extend our product and service offering to our customer base with proven cutting-edge technology that the SuperSmolt®Program provides. This positively complements our position in aquatic health products business,” says Jim-Roger Nordly, CEO, Nordly Holding AS.
The SuperSmolt® Program is designed to lower production costs by increasing hatchery capacity, and through this improve the efficacy of seawater production as well.
Arthur Lyngøy, Manager of ACD Pharmaceuticals states, “the SuperSmolt® Program is a production tool that will increase the capacity in existing hatcheries and can have a significant impact on addressing the current smolt shortage in Norway. The program creates a high quality smolt in a shorter time, compared to traditional production methods. This has a positive impact on transfer date and growth performance in the sea site. We’re very excited on the potential of this Program and ACD’s alliance with MariCal to represent their technology in Norway.”
MariCal, headquartered in Portland, Maine USA was founded in 1996 and is a privately held aquatic life science biotechnology company with 22 full time employees and operations in Alaska, Canada, Chile, United Kingdom, and Norway. MariCal’s key discovery is that of a class of molecular extracellular ion receptor proteins, called Calcium Receptors (CaR’s), that serve as the biological “thermostats,” or “master switches” that enable fish and other aquatic organisms to sense and respond to changes in both water salinity and nutrients in their aquatic environment. Over the past 10 years, the Company has focused both its product development and licensing efforts in the fields of aquaculture, fisheries, and marine products.
MariCal is a recognized global leader in aquatic biotechnology possessing 55 issued and pending patents in their field. Specific applications that MariCal has developed from these discoveries include global commercial Atlantic salmon production, Pacific salmon production on North America’s West coast, and restoration and enhancements efforts of Pacific Salmon species in Alaska, and endangered Atlantic salmon in Maine. Natural and environmentally friendly, the specific applications developed from these discoveries use neither genetic alteration nor the introduction of drugs or hormones. (For more details on MariCal visit www.marical.biz ).
