Act locally, compete globally

Epichem, which will be exhibiting as part of the Australian Pavilion at BIO 2008, exports its products and services to drug discovery and pharmaceutical companies around the world. With clients scattered everywhere from North America to South Africa, India, France and beyond, Epichem has had to adapt quickly to learn how to service its far-flung customer base from the company's head office in Perth.

"Being so far away from your market can be a negative," Wayne Best says. And apart from the usual difficulties of having to communicate with clients in a variety of time zones, Best and the team at Epichem also deal with more sensitive issues, like the hassles that attend shipping chemicals to and from Australia.

"Shipping chemicals across the globe is problematic at times," Best says. "It's very much a chemophobic world that we live in, so shipping these things can sometimes be frustrating, but generally speaking the stuff that we send to our clients gets cleared within five days, so turnaround time isn't too bad."

Epichem has a laboratory in Melbourne, adjacent to Monash University, but the company's main lab and head office are both located in Perth. This facility is on the campus of Murdoch University, in close proximity to Andrew Thompson and university's renowned Parasite Group.

Best says that it is precisely this close working relationship between the biologists, parasitologists and the chemists that gives Epichem an edge over its competitors.