Quantum Materials Corp. (fka QTMM)

[TedJ]

From Financial Times on 11/3/20

Contracts
The government has signed at least 10 contracts with companies based in the UK, US and China, totalling more than £1bn, for rapid testing technology and logistics, according to publicly available contracts on the EU public procurement site, Ted, and information shared with the non-profit legal firm the Good Law Project.

Despite a drive to turbocharge the UK diagnostics industry, the contracts show that the DoH spent $138m (£106m) on millions of lateral flow tests produced by US company Innova, whose tests will be used in the Liverpool pilot.

It has spent more than £80m on two tests made by US companies Abbott and LumiraDX, which is also being offered by the pharmaceuticals retailer Boots, according to the documents. One person close to the procurement process said the government had also spent an unspecified sum on lateral flow tests produced by the Chinese company Zhejiang Orient Gene and the Korean medtech company SD Biosensor.

“We’ve yet to find a UK-based lateral flow test that’s good enough,” according to a person directly involved in the validation process.

The government has signed contracts worth more than £430m with two UK companies, Optigene and Oxford Nanopore, for the supply of Covid-19 Lamp tests.