Bosch to automate production of Ellume’s rapid COVID-19 tests

Bosch Australia is undergoing a renaissance, returning to turning over $1bn a year and providing factory automation to Australia’s biggest medical companies.

Ellume chief executive and founder Sean Parsons — a critical care doctor — said the tests would allow the return to some kind of normality from COVID-19. Photo by Jens Schlueter/Getty Images

Medical tech company Ellume will tap into high-level automation used by the country’s biggest biotechs, including CSL, Cochlear and ResMed, to produce its rapid coronavirus tests for the US government.

Ellume has recruited Bosch’s Australian arm to automate its factory in Brisbane that will produce the tests that can detect COVID-19 in less than 15 minutes allowing the world’s biggest economy to return to some kind of normality.

The US government has injected $US30m ($42m) into Ellume, which is aiming to start delivering its tests before the Thanksgiving holiday next month.

Bosch will begin manufacturing the automation equipment at its factory in Clayton in Melbourne’s east and send it to Queensland with a small team for installation and commissioning.

Bosch Australia president Gavin Smith said although the company had staff in Queensland, he hoped border restrictions would ease soon to allow the team to install the equipment.

“It presents some challenges, as you can imagine. But with the work we are doing with Ellume, the machines are designed, specified, tested and trialed in Melbourne and then we put them in boxes and send it up to Queensland. There is a bit of time between that happening,” Mr Smith said.

But Ellume has yet to convince the Queensland and federal government of its technology.

Talks with the Palaszczuk government have “largely fallen on deaf ears” as it heads into the state election at the end of the month, while the federal government hasn’t engaged as much with the company as the US, leading the Americans to get first dibs on the rapid tests.

For Bosch, the contract with Ellume represents a renaissance for the business which has returned to turning over about $1bn a year after its revenue halved following the end of Australian car manufacturing three years ago.

Mr Smith said the company had re-established itself as a leader in factory automation, particularly in the advanced medical manufacturing sector, securing “blue chip” clients including Australia’s biggest company CSL, Cochlear and ResMed.

“(In 2016) we were starting to come through what others were describing as the valley of death. We had to go through a massive restructuring moving most of our manufacturing offshore, making lots of people redundant.

“But now the business is back at plus or minus a $1bn in turnover which is where it was before, and the things that are really firing now, our consumer brands, power tools and appliances are doing better than ever.”

Ellume chief executive and founder Sean Parsons — a critical care doctor — said the tests would allow the return to some kind of normality from COVID-19.

Ellume has developed three tests: at home, point-of-care for medical professionals, and another for high-throughput settings, which can complete eight tests at once and is ideal for use at airports, stadiums, offices and other places with crowds.

The at-home test uses an analyser connected to a smartphone through Bluetooth which analyses a self-collected sample from the user’s nasal passage.

The results are then transmitted through a secure cloud connection, generating a digital certificate.