Botry Zen officials were yesterday celebrating a significant achievement with the Dunedin company receiving United States product registration for its biological control agent, BOTRY-ZEN.
Chairman Stephen Higgs said the company's future lay in exporting to markets such as the US wine industry, but it also required extra capital and the company intended offering shareholders a share purchase to raise an undisclosed amount of new capital.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to register Botry Zen's flagship of the same name as a biofungicide, to control the grape and fruit wasting disease, Botrytis cinerea.
Mr Higgs said Botry Zen still needed to get registration for each individual state, a task he said should be relatively straight forward, but the key grape growing states of California, Oregon and Washington would be the initial targets.
As well, the company would approach key US wineries and universities to trial BOTRY-ZEN to prove its effectiveness and help get local acceptance.
"Given our achievement in New Zealand and trials in parts of Europe, we're very confident in the results, but we need to demonstrate it to distributors and ultimately our customers, the growers."
Next year, he expected Botry Zen to develop contacts and acceptance in the US with sales likely to grow from 2011.
A shareholder meeting in Dunedin on November 6 will seek approval in principle for capital raising, in which every shareholder can buy up to $15,000 in new shares.
Mr Higgs said the money would be used to buy four new fermenters for the Dunedin factory with the product used for the US trials and ultimately for sale to customers and to fund development of the US and European markets.
The company's general manager, Stephen Lorimer, has been in the US and is now in Europe mapping out how to develop business there and get product registration in target countries, Mr Higgs said the European wine industry had given him a positive reception.
