Chairman Dr Max Shepherd said the company is faced with further expansion and development costs and is at present in discussions with its bankers and third parties regarding fu-ture working capital re-quirements, he said in a statement yesterday.
Trading re-venue in-creased from $60,000 to $342,208 for the year to March, but while having cut back on expenses in administration, distribution and marketing, Botry Zen's total liabilities for the 12 months grew from $895,000 to $1.28 million, which includes an expanding overdraft facility, rising about 70% from $577,000 to $983,000.
Dr Shepherd said the company, which produces biological control products against fruit- and grape-wasting fungus botrytis cinerea, had during the past year seen the New Zealand wine industry move to widely adopt its Botry-Zen and Armour-Zen products into the sustainable grape-growing programme.
"This has helped boost sales revenue for the year ended March 2008. These increased in excess of 460% against the previous period, and levels could well have been substantially higher had the production capacity been available," Dr Shepherd said in a statement.
ABN Amro Craigs broker Peter McIntyre said while the worldwide credit crunch would have done "few favours" for Botry Zen in its search for funding, its ability to find further working capital was a "key issue".
"Getting licensing issues under way and active in Europe will be a priority," he said.
Dr Shepherd said during the year registration was secured in Germany and Austria for both products, with the first export shipment of Botry-Zen delivered in late March and Armour-Zen shipments to Europe are scheduled for this month.
There were some mid-season "formulation issues" with Armour-Zen which inhibited sales targets during the closing weeks of the season, he said.
However, Botry Zen was pleased to receive favourable performance reports from growers where Armour-Zen was used against end-of-season infection events, Dr Shepherd said.
