A decade-long collaboration between Pharmalink Extracts and the Biotechnologies Group has kept 100 jobs and $60 million in annual revenue in New Zealand, and continues to deliver new innovation.
At a glace
- Pharmalink Extracts collaborated with the Biotechnologies Group when they needed advanced extraction capability to unlock high-value marine oils.
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By using supercritical extraction technology, the Biotechnologies Group was able to recover high-value compounds that conventional methods struggled to extract.
- The patented technology runs at full commercial scale in Nelson, producing premium marine oils with exceptional purity and yield at unmatched industrial scale.
"The close synergy is a core feature for delivering value. You end up working as an integrated team. We bring connection to the market, full-scale operational problems and solutions, they bring fundamental science and opportunities, analytical and pilot scale production."
Charles Hodgson, Director and Chief Operating Officer
Extracting high-value marine oils
There’s no placebo effect with a pet. When a limping cat starts bouncing back to life after taking a joint supplement made from New Zealand marine oils, something is working - and the manufacturing technology behind it comes from the Biotechnologies Group, in partnership with a group of Nelson-based marine extract companies.
Pharmalink Extracts operates a supercritical extraction facility in Nelson that produces high-value mussel and krill oils, generating over $60 million in revenue in 2025, with products exported to markets across Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East. The high-tech companies associated with the Nelson supply chain employ over 165 people at the seasonal peak, including 130 jobs at partner company MacLab, which processes the raw mussel material.
A decade-long collaboration
The Biotechnologies Group’s patented supercritical extraction technology has been running commercially at the facility for over a decade, at a scale no other facility in the world has replicated.
“The technology has had a very large multiplier effect”, says Charles Hodgson, a Director and Chief Operating Officer at Pharmalink Extracts and a Director of distribution and technical partner company, Tasman Natural NZ. Pharmalink Extracts paid $1.16 million in income tax in 2024 alone, alongside $3.8 million to employees and $4.8 million in operating expenses. “The tax revenues from Pharmalink and MacLab would have just gone away if we hadn’t had that ongoing technical support from the Biotechnologies Group.”
The ongoing R&D partnership with Biotechnologies Group experts, including Dr Owen Catchpole, Chief Engineer of the Biotechnologies Group, and Dr Stephen Tallon, Process Engineering Team Lead, has ensured these benefits to the wider New Zealand economy have remained here. “Pharmalink hasn't looked at offshoring any of the work we do because of the ongoing technical capability we can access here,” says Hodgson. “We've never even considered relocating the facility offshore, even though that would put it closer to our markets."
At the heart of the 11-year partnership is a supercritical CO₂ extraction process and a closely related ‘CXE’ process patented in New Zealand and Australia in 2007 by the Biotechnologies Group, then part of Callaghan Innovation, with the patent since licensed to Pharmalink to apply at industrial scale. “The research team was the tip of the spear globally in this space,” says Hodgson. “For a little country like New Zealand, those guys punch well above their weight on behalf of New Zealand industry.”
The science behind the method
The CXE method uses carbon dioxide under extreme pressure as a solvent, with ethanol added as a co-solvent to separate high-value, extremely high-quality ‘polar’ lipids from lower-value oils. Polar lipids have an unusual affinity with water, with their ability to dissolve meaning they are readily absorbed into a person’s bloodstream (or their pet’s) – and which also makes them seriously difficult to extract using conventional supercritical extraction.
The process also enables the extraction of “huge yields” of oils, says Hodgson. “It’s a high-cost process but the oils are really high value, so it’s critical to get them all out.”
From pilot scale to global production
The technology was originally developed at Callaghan Innovation’s pilot-scale facility in Lower Hutt, where new processes are researched and proven before proceeding to commercial production. Pharmalink’s Nelson facility was retrofitted with ethanol injection systems and evaporators to run the CXE extraction process at full commercial scale. The result is a production line that extracts premium oils for both people and pets, including blended mussel and krill oil products for joint pain relief marketed as Lyprinol®, Omega XL®, and Antinol®.
Pharmalink’s supercritical extraction facility also supports other New Zealand companies; Hyperganic’s totarol extraction produces ingredients supplied into the international cosmetics industry, and anti-microbial coatings for medical implants, for example. The technology can also extract algal antioxidant oils containing astaxanthin, and produce sandalwood seed extract for the Australian skincare industry. Each of these high-value customer products is supported by Biotechnologies Group technical capability and innovation.
Built on trust and capability
What makes the collaboration work, according to Hodgson, is not just the technology but the way the team operates together. “The close synergy is a core feature for delivering value,” he says. “You end up working as an integrated team. We bring connection to the market, full-scale operational problems and solutions, they bring fundamental science and opportunities, analytical and pilot scale production.”
“It comes down to the skill and character of the people. It's highly iterative and if there was posturing and egos, it wouldn’t work – and there hasn't been that, ever. They are humble, grounded, and massively practical.”
The R&D partnership continues to evolve, currently through Pharmalink’s technology partner Tasman Natural NZ, with new extraction processes developed through the CyberMarine research programme being adopted at commercial scale.
“We are now full-scale manufacturing a novel health product using a new process variant that originated with the Biotechnologies Group for the first time in global history,” says Hodgson.
As the Biotechnologies Group transitions into the Bioeconomy Science Institute, Hodgson’s view of what’s at stake is unequivocal. "We owe the Biotechnologies Group team. They've been fantastic for a long time, and in my heart of hearts I think they’re critical to New Zealand’s future. They’re one of the last bastions of widely available know-how and value-add capability."
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