CK Life mulling state sweeteners

Hong Kong's Cheong Kong Holdings-backed biotech venture CK Life Sciences is yet to decide which state will house its Australian operations, the company said on Tuesday, as it weighs up offers from some very determined suitors.

"We do plan to establish a branch office in Australia but we are still in the negotiation process and haven't made any decisions," a spokeswoman for CK Life Sciences told Australian Biotechnology News.

CK chief executive Kam Hing Lam was in Queensland just over a week ago when he met with Premier Peter Beattie to discuss the company's future in that state.

Earlier this month, Melbourne Lord Mayor John So and Victorian Premier Steve Bracks met with Lam in Beijing as part of a state trade mission to China and Hong Kong. It was the first time that a Melbourne Lord Mayor had accompanied a Victorian Premier on an overseas trade jaunt.

Also in the hunt, South Australian Deputy Premier Kevin Foley met with Lam while himself on a trade mission to Hong Kong in late July.

The three states are now understood to be in a bidding war for CK Life involving generous tax concessions and other inducements, although the details of negotiations are being kept under tight wraps.

Highlighting the importance of CK's decision is speculation that the company intends to build a major research facility in Australia, a belief supported by company chairman Li Ka Shing's recent comments highlighting the importance of infrastructure development for the group.

Local analysts have also pointed to Australia's unique and highly skilled workforce relative to the rest of Asia as providing a major inducement for Li to make such an investment.

Speaking with Australian Biotechnology News yesterday, a CK Life spokeswoman said that the company had not yet decided which offer to accept and would not comment on specific negotiations concerning any plans for local infrastructure investment.

"We haven't made any decisions about the form of the investment," the spokeswoman said.

CK Life was listed on Hong Kong's Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) in July this year this year in a move seen as providing a glowing endorsement of Asia's infant biotech sector.

One of the company's key concerns is agricultural bioscience, an area believed to be of particular interest to Li who is known for his philanthropical stance on famine and malnutrition.

CK Life's only commercially available product at the moment is a fertiliser, NutriSmart, which was first trialled in South Australia and Queensland. The company hopes NutriSmart will help reduce environmental and agricultural depredation caused by fertiliser leaching.

Late last year, CK Life signed an agreement with local agribusiness giant Elders to distribute the product in Australia. CK Life estimated the Australian fertiliser market to be about $US1 billion annually.

At a briefing in Hong Kong in June, CK Life vice-president Alan Yu said that Australia held strategic significance for the company. "The country is blessed with rich natural resources, and the citizens are very conscious of protecting the environment," he said. "NutriSmart should have an important role in sustainable farming in Australia - the product has the potential to revolutionise the whole agricultural industry and be a dominant player in the worldwide fertiliser market."