Nordion wins six-year contract to supply cobalt-60 to U.K. sterilization firm

OTTAWA - Medical isotope producer Nordion Inc. (TSX:NDN) said Thursday it has won a six-year contract to supply cobalt-60 to a U.K.-based sterilization service company.

Under the agreement, Nordion will supply the isotope to Synergy Health, which has long been a customer of the Ottawa-based company.

Cobalt-60 is used in the gamma radiation sterilization of single-use medical devices and supplies, such as syringes, medical gowns, gloves and masks.

"Synergy has been a Nordion customer for many years, and we are pleased to extend the relationship through this agreement," Synergy Health group commercial director Paul Santing said in a statement.

Nordion emerged from the former MDS Inc., a drug research, high-end medical equipment and isotopes producer which restructured a few years ago. MDS employed 3,600 people in 2009 but sold its lab and technology businesses and renamed itself Nordion after its nuclear medicine division.

It has said it expects sales of its nuclear medical isotopes to be squeezed by a planned shutdown of the Chalk River reactor in the summer of 2012, which will create a shortfall that the company's Russian supplier can't fill.

The company, which also trades on the New York Stock Exchange, has 500 employees and sells its products to drug and biotech companies, medical device makers, hospitals, clinics and research labs around the world.

There was a global shortage of medical isotopes when the federally owned NRU reactor in Chalk River, Ont., was shut down in May 2009 because of a leak that took more than a year to repair.

The shortage caused a political furor in the Commons and concerns by doctors and other health professionals about the availability of medical tests for Canadians.