Nelson company punches above its weight

If you’ve ever eaten food that’s been routinely tested for listeria, had a test taken at Nelson Hospital or your local vet, chances are you’ve used a growing Nelson company’s product without even knowing it.

Ngaio Diagnostics supplies medical diagnostic products to manufacturers, hospitals and vets across the country, but in more recent times their focus has been on Covid-19 testing products.

Managing director Stuart Mckenzie says in the past three weeks they have ordered more than a million rapid antigen testing kits (RATs) to distribute across New Zealand.

“Our customer base has grown by thousands in just the past three weeks,” he says.

Stuart says since antigen testing began, they have had to hire three more staff to keep up with demand.

“We’ve never been this busy, without the extra manpower we just can’t do it. It’s been very long hours, seven days a week, working nights to come in and pack orders.”

Stuart says they will supply anything from one testing kit through to large orders of hundreds of thousands at a time.

He says they are supplying a lot of the big manufacturing companies locally.

“We are certainly supporting local where we can but at the moment the demand is national, so its quite hard to just pull out the Nelson people.”

The family-owned and run company was founded in 1991 by Stuart’s father, who he says has been brought back out of semi-retirement to help cope with demand.

Testing kits will be available for purchase directly through the Ngaio Diagnostics website in the coming week or so.