Excitement builds for tomorrow's One2One forum as Sarantel, ValiRx and National Milk Record present

It was a case of standing room only at One2One forum last week which attracted huge interest.

Tomorrow we have a roster of equally exciting companies presenting. Our evening features Sarantel (LON:SLG), as well as National Milk Records (PLUS:NMRP) and ValiRx (LON:VAL).

Each has an incredible story to tell, though for those people who haven’t signed up here’s a sneak preview.

Sarantel is a designer and maker of high performance miniature antennas used in mobile phones and military walkie-talkies.

But this description fails to tell the whole story. For what the company has produced could utterly transform mobile internet – and handset manufacturers are slowly cottoning on to the potential of the technology.

The small copper coated, centimeter-high capsule that has been around since the year 2000. It was the brainchild of the company’s chief technology officer, Dr. Oliver Leisten, who came up the idea of creating a smaller antenna by using ceramic as its core. In order to realise this idea Sarantel has had to develop a precision 3D lithography manufacturing process.

One of the unintended but very significant advantages in using this approach was that Leisten’s invention substantially negates the effect of the human body which absorbs radiation and distorts the signal.

This is particularly helpful in handheld devices such as the walkie-talkie. The Sarantel antenna ensures the GPS used in security encrypted military radios is pin-prick accurate.

The US armed forces have been early adopters and it is an area where Sarantel is starting to gain significant traction.

Other uses of Sarantel’s tiny but powerful antenna include prisoner tracking devices, watches for kids with the wanderlust, mobile phones for the elderly and a golf gadget that measures the distance from the hole.

Where it has failed to make any impact whatsoever is in the mainstream handsets, yet it seems to be a component tailor-made for the latest smartphones, which now come with in-built GPS. Up to now the big manufacturers have relied on inferior technology because it is cheaper than the Sarantel antenna.

However the landscape is changing and the market is starting to catch up with the Sarantel technology. Buyers of the latest HTC or iPhone are increasingly unwilling to accept a gadget where GPS is inaccurate particularly in built-up areas when they are using it to map out bike rides or runs.

And if app-based pedestrian satnavs take off, they will require cutting edge antennas that work in all environments and down to the nearest metre.

But there’s another reason why the Sarantel antenna may be about to come into its own - the burgeoning mobile marketing boom to which I alluded earlier.

We are not talking here about spam texts. No, these are laser-focused promotions that are activated when say you stop to window shop or browse the menu at the local pizzeria. And where you’d be texted the latest money-off voucher or two-for-one offer.

The current GPS technology would struggle and fail miserably with this.  Speaking with Sarantel chief executive David Wither, he senses the mindset of the smartphone makers is changing prompted by a big nudge from the GPS chip specialists, who know the current aerials don’t pass muster.

“The innovations are now appearing that we believe are going to drive people to integrate (our product),” says chief executive David Wither, who is presenting at the Chesterfield tomorrow.

“We have been out in front of this wave for a while. The market seems to be catching up, catching on.”

National Milk Records can trace its origins all the way back to the old Milk Marketing Board.

Quoted on the PLUS market, NMR supplies herd management information and milk sample analysis used by farmers. However it does a lot more besides this, including ear tagging, micro-biology and disease testing.

The company recently appointed a business manager for Scotland and has carried out a major revamp of its shares register.

A total of 28,000 dairy farmers were given shares in National Milk Records back in 1997 when the firm was first formed following the disbanding of the Milk Marketing Board.

That figure shrank to 24,500 and following the re-organisation there now 6,500 investors in NMR.

“After the restructuring the company will have a pool of credible and significant investors ...who share management’s view that NMR’s shares are undervalued,” finance director Chris Hughes told Proactive Investors last year.

Chris will explain all as when he sets out the company’s plans for the coming year during his One2One presentation. 

ValiRx has enjoyed a quite incredible start to the year with the shares up over 600 per cent at one point.

It is a little different from most fledgling drugs development businesses in that it has a potentially cash generative medical testing business.

The ValiMedix arm recently made a big splash with the UK’s first self test kit for Chlamydia, though there’s a whole suite of other products too.

The blue-sky opportunity comes in the form of VAL101 and VAL201, two potential cancer treatments with blockbuster potential. However, the treatments also have potential in multiple specific areas.

The former is based on the something called GeneICE, which is a tool for silencing rebellious genes. In that respect it is similar to the cutting siRNA technologies being used to target cancers. However GeneICE has the potential to be more specific, longer-acting and carries with it fewer side-effects, Vainikka says.

Developed by Imperial College, GeneICE is a platform technology, which means it has the potential to spawn a whole series of treatments for neurological and inflammatory diseases, although ValiRx is assessing its potential in hard-to-treat cancers.

Candidate 201, by contrast, has been developed to hit one target - refractory prostate cancer where there is huge unmet medical need. A second indication has been identified also with significant unmet need.
ValiRx acquired VAL201 from an Italian research group in a deal brokered by Cancer Research UK, though much of the additional preclinical work is being carried out by academics at Oxford University.

In fact the group recently signed deals with both Oxford and Imperial College to accelerate the development of these two lead therapeutics.
And the company’s chief executive Dr Satu Vainikka will tell us more tomorrow when she joins us at the Chesterfield.

To find out more about any one of our three guests companies book up now by clicking this link  http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/register/event_details/110.  To avoid disappointment book up early.