Eurofins Food & Microbiology Lab Economics
Former VP at Eurofins
inpractise.com/articles/eurofins-food-and-microbiology-lab-economics
Why is this interview interesting?
- Giles Martin owns the majority of the real-estate of Eurofins’ labs
- Eurofins has a competitive advantage by having the densest microbiology network
- Automating sample handling is easier in chemical than biology testing
- Biology labs are losing employees to clinical labs that can afford to pay higher wages
- Labour cost is 35% of lab cost structure and is up 10-15% in last 12 months
- How Eurofins would manage a large account like Nestle across numerous tests
Eurofins Scientific SE
Why is this company interesting?
Eurofins is a French-listed, owner-operated lab testing company that operates in the food, agriculture, environmental, and pharmaceutical industries. The company was founded in 1987 and has compounded at 30% for over 34 years to become one of the highest performing European listed equities over the last 30 years.
Eurofins is run by the founder Gilles Martin who still owns 25% of the business. Martin has made over 400 acquisitions since 1997 and opened 180 new labs. The company owns ~800 labs that offer 200,000 microbiology, chemistry, and other types of specialized testing to large corporate QA divisions to ensure product quality meets regulatory standards and customer demands.
Eurofins benefits from high lab density that reduces the test turnaround time and the wide range of tests available create sticky relationships with customers. Over 70% of the revenue ex-COVID benefits come from food, pharma, cosmetic, and environmental verticals but the potential growth opportunity lies in more specialised clinical diagnostic testing.
Written in December 2021
Eurofins Food & Microbiology Lab Economics(February 24, 2022)
Richard Higby
Former VP at Eurofins
Interview Transcript
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