Latest news

MastaPlex completes North American distribution coverage with UKAL Canada deal

MastaPlex Ltd (Dunedin, New Zealand) has announced a new distribution deal with UKAL Canada for Mastatest®, its flagship mastitis diagnostic technology. This agreement gives UKAL exclusive sales and marketing rights for Mastatest in Canada.  The agreement extends Mastatest availability across the North American continent, and is another significant step forward in MastaPlex’s global growth plans. 

Mastaplex CEO, Dr Olaf Bork, commented “UKAL Canada are a highly respected distributor of veterinary and farming products in the Canadian market, with their focus on livestock. We’re very pleased to have a distributor of this calibre working with Mastatest in the Canadian market. They have a clear focus on delivering excellent customer service and support, which is very important to our business. We’re already seeing an impact as they start taking Mastatest out to their customers. We’re looking forward to a positive and productive partnership for years to come” 

Mastitis is one of the leading health issues affecting dairy herds globally. In Canada, where there are approximately 10,000 dairy farms and 1 million dairy cattle, it is estimated that it costs producers $662 CAD per cow-year(1). For a 200-cow farm, this can mean mastitis costs them more than $120,000 CAD annually. A major proportion of this is from losses in milk yield. Mastatest has the potential to dramatically reduce that, by enabling herd managers and veterinarians to make targeted, data-driven mastitis management decisions”. 

Traditionally every mastitis case would have been treated with antibiotics regardless of the cause, costing dairies both in terms of treatment costs and lost milk production due to with-holding periods. Today, experts recommend dairies identify the cause of mastitis and selectively treat based on this information. As many as 50% of all cases will not benefit from antibiotic use. Reducing the number of antibiotic-treated cases means lower treatment costs, and fewer days of milk needing to be withheld. Ultimately this means major productivity gains. 

Through Mastatest, its patented, on-farm mastitis diagnostic test, Mastaplex empowers farmers and veterinarians with fast, accurate, and actionable insights to guide treatment decisions and improve animal health outcomes. Mastatest is the first on-farm tool in the world to collect real-time, daily insights from mastitis cases from around the globe, making it the preferred tool. Launched in New Zealand in 2018, it is the number one on-farm mastitis diagnostic in New Zealand.  

 Using Mastatest is easy: it takes just seconds to fill a test cartridge and start a test on the Lapbox™ hardware device. Samples are then automatically analyzed, and the data is interpreted in the cloud. Results detailing the bacterial species present (and its sensitivity to key antibiotics in some instances) are emailed back to the farm and veterinarian within 24 hours. All a dairy’s results are available 24/7 in the customer portal, as are custom reports that can be generated to support and power on-farm herd management decisions. 

ENDS 

About UKAL Canada:  

Renowned for more than 50 years, UKAL Élevage, a company from Alsace-France, established in 1998, a subsidiary in St-Hyacinthe, Québec – UKAL CANADA, which provides a variety of animal care products via its Canadian distributorship. UKAL is the livestock specialist which distinguishes itself by providing focussed, customer service, high quality products and expedient order delivery. 

About Mastaplex:  

Mastaplex was founded by Dr. Olaf Bork based on his insights into how the management of bovine mastitis could be improved. Today, Mastaplex is on a mission to revolutionize agricultural point-of-care diagnostics - starting with Mastatest for bovine mastitis. More than 3250 farmers and veterinarians worldwide are already using Mastatest, which is available through our sales and distribution partners in more than 20 countries around the world, including many in the European Union, the United Kingdom, North America, New Zealand, Australia and Southern Africa. Based in Dunedin, New Zealand, our talented team led by Dr Bork brings deep expertise in veterinary medicine, dairy farming, animal health research, microbiology, milk quality, diagnostics, hardware and software development, data analytics, artificial intelligence and more. 

1. Aghamohammadi M, Haine D, Kelton DF, Barkema HW, Hogeveen H, Keefe GP, Dufour S. Herd-Level Mastitis-Associated Costs on Canadian Dairy Farms. Front Vet Sci. 2018 May 14;5:100.