not long now john

After five and a half years of “character building” (first purchased UNI in September 2003), I can now stare down the most aggressive of adversaries, remain calm in the midst of chaos and occasionally win an argument with my better half!!!.........but I don’t know how much more character building I can stand!! Can only laugh!

Regarding the IA, at least management have now taken the correct stance in the last release, and conceded that it will be ready when both parties are in agreement and all signed off and not some unachievable date that someone has dreamt up. This is an area that I believe UNI have performed poorly in over the years, namely making predictions that they were never going to be able to meet, and this area of their operation has been discussed many times on this thread, with a wide divergence of views. I have stated before, that now having moved up to be a near term producer, instead of the eternal ‘promising’ minnow, things would have improved................ I remain hopeful in this regard.

Sanofi did not get to be one of the largest pharmas in the world without being tough negotiators. I have no doubt that if SA thought they could get hold of the patent for next to nothing, they would. They are not benevolent benefactors! In my opinion, the fact that SA made funds available to UNI well before the official signing off on the agreement, allowed UNI to set sail at last on a decisive plan of action to commercialise their product, however, it also gives SA the whip hand in that UNI are now dependent on the funds from SA with the agreement still to be struck. To balance this up though, I believe Alan Shortall to be no slouch when it comes to negotiation, and has the added advantage that UNI holds one of the most significant patents ever to come out of Australia. Go Alan, get the best deal possible! We need it.

Re-reading parts of the CCZ report, the 1ml line at its US facilities is stated as being ‘in production’ by the end of 1st quarter (here’s hoping that prediction is somewhere near right), and as others have pointed out, staff are being recruited right now including 20 machine operators, so it is not a big step to surmise that production is imminent. Here’s hoping it all stacks up and after 6 or 7 years, we will actually be able to refer to UNI as a genuine “Syringe Manufacturer”. How sweet that will sound!

I regularly think about the patent as designed by Thorley and Kraal (apologies if I have the spelling incorrect) and it strikes me that often the most brilliant successful inventions are the very simple ones and I think UNI’s safety syringe is right at the top. I would hazard a guess that thousands would have had a go at designing such an item, yet their idea of simply tilting the needle over once retracted inside the barrel was not entertained. Quite amazing! I genuinely hope that these two blokes will be recognised for their design one day formally, because it is the basis of what I believe will be a truly outstanding company, Unilife.

It will take time, it will frustrate many, remember that according to the CCZ report, first income from the rtf syringes is not till 2010 from the 1M/annum line and 2011 from the first 40M/annum line at the earliest. Here’s hoping that the actual start of commercial production of the diabetic 1ml line OR the IA will see some movement in the share price. (Up, up, up.....)

Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

LL