OREANDA-NEWS. Sphere Medical Holding plc (AIM: SPHR.L), a leading provider of innovative monitoring and diagnostic devices for the critical care setting, announces the official opening, today, of its new commercial production facility in St. Asaph, Wales, by Edwina Hart, Minister for Economy, Science and Transport for the Welsh Government.

The new facilities include a state of the art cleanroom and will provide the necessary capacity in order to meet the expected growing demand for the Proxima platform over the coming years.  Demand is anticipated to increase later this year with the expected launch of the Proxima 4, the next generation device currently undergoing CE marking.  Proxima 4 will make closer nursing possible during a patient's critical period, faster and more frequent production of results, and avoidance of blood loss and reduction of infection risks to a broader patient demographic, including paediatric patients. This will be an important step towards realising the full market potential of Proxima within the $3.2bn worldwide market for blood gas and electrolyte testing.

This activity follows the successful financing of the Company in April 2015 in which ?13.2 million was raised from investors including Woodford Investment Management and the Wales Fund (a fund raising up to ?100 million focused on life sciences and managed by Arthurian). There is no significant capital expenditure requirement to prepare the production facilities in Wales.

Media are invited to attend the event today at Units 1 and 2, St Asaph Business Park, St Asaph, Denbighshire LL17 0LJ from 11.30am to 1pm.

Dr. Wolfgang Rencken, Chief Executive Officer of Sphere Medical, said: "Today's official opening marks a significant moment for Sphere as we prepare to start commercial production; our dedicated sales force is now marketing Proxima directly to the critical care market and we were pleased to report news of our first sale of Proxima 3 in Germany last week.

"We are grateful to the Minister today, the Welsh Government and the Wales Life Sciences Investment Fund for their support with this development."

About Sphere Medical (AIM: SPHR.L)

Sphere Medical is a medical device company developing and commercialising a range of innovative monitoring and diagnostic devices designed to significantly improve patient care.

Sphere Medical's vision is to become a leading solution provider to the critical care market offering innovative, near real time, point of care diagnostic and monitoring products to enable closer control of therapeutic response and improve patient outcomes and reduce the overall cost of care.

The Company's strategy is focused on developing the Proxima (CE-marked device) platform for measuring blood gases, electrolytes and metabolites.  The Company is already selling its Proxima 3 product directly to the critical care market, which includes the ICU and OR, with a dedicated field sales force in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.  The Company also proposes to work with partners for the worldwide distribution of Proxima.

Proxima delivers near real time analysis of blood gases and electrolytes metabolites, at the patient's bedside.  Proxima can be used on patients across a wide therapeutic range, enabling faster clinical decision making and improved patient outcomes, whilst potentially reducing costs for healthcare payers.