Big pharma takes notice as Novo Nordisk puts Clever Culture’s APAS to the test

• Novo Nordisk kicks off APAS test drive
• Clever Culture eyes global rollout
• The company’s pharma pipeline is swelling

It’s a big moment for any Australian company when a global pharmaceutical giant comes knocking.

But for Adelaide-based Clever Culture Systems (ASX:CC5), this wasn’t just a knock; it was a deliberate move by a global heavyweight in drug manufacturing, Novo Nordisk.

On Monday, Clever Culture confirmed that it had received a purchase order from Novo for its flagship APAS Independence instrument.

The machine will be delivered to Novo’s central team in Denmark, where it will undergo a full-scale evaluation to assess its suitability for deployment across Novo’s global manufacturing network.

The Danish giant will be comparing Clever’s automated plate reading technology against its existing manual microbiology workflows.

The evaluation will cover both standard 90mm “settle plates” and the more nuanced 55mm “contact plates” – the two staples of pharmaceutical environmental monitoring.

Why this matters

Novo Nordisk is a global leader in diabetes and obesity treatment.

The company currently pumps billions into its manufacturing footprint to keep up with global demand for its blockbuster drugs, Ozempic and Wegovy.

Its facilities are massive, complex, and stringently sterile; and that’s exactly where Clever’s APAS technology enters the frame.

The APAS Independence uses AI technology to automate one of the most time-consuming parts of microbiology – analysing agar plates for contamination.

It can assess hundreds of plates per hour, filtering out the negatives, and flagging anything that might require closer inspection by human microbiologists.

That’s a big deal in an industry where even minor contamination can derail production, trigger recalls, and in extreme cases, harm patients.

APAS essentially transforms a manual, repetitive process into a standardised digital workflow, creating a clean audit trail.

Novo will now test APAS across both plate types, aiming to validate its ability as a complete solution.

The fact that Novo is doing this at its central “centre of excellence” site is no small detail; it suggests potentially broader applicability for APAS across Novo’s global network.

The long-term strategy

For Clever Culture, this sale is a key milestone in a long-term strategy to focus on top-tier pharmaceutical manufacturers.

CEO Brent Barnes, who’s been leading the company’s shift toward applications in pharmaceutical manufacturing, said the adoption by these top-tier pharma firms helps establish credibility across the entire industry.

“Novo is amongst the largest sterile drug manufacturers globally and have been great to work with, adding significant bench-strength to customer advocacy and the industry with respect to APAS,” he said.

“By doing it in this manner, they also have the most to gain from automation and standardisation.”

From a sales execution perspective, it also means that Clever Culture is working with a centralised point of contact that could then introduce APAS to their global manufacturing sites.

These organisations have both the resources and infrastructure to evaluate new technologies centrally and deploy them at scale.

“This is therefore a very targeted and efficient sales process.”

How big could it get?

The short answer: potentially very. According to Novo Nordisk’s own website, the company operates 16 large manufacturing sites around the world.

And just like AstraZeneca, which started with one APAS system and now has nine installed, it’s likely that multiple units could be required at each facility if the evaluation is successful.

But Barnes is careful not to overstate things, saying that the company isn’t in a position to put out forecasts at this early stage.

“We have stated that for larger manufacturing sites, multiple APAS instruments may be required, this has been the case for AstraZeneca as an example.

“You could take an external view on what the opportunity could look like based on this information.”

Clever Culture now counts five top-tier pharmaceutical customers that are either evaluating or already using APAS: AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Thermo Fisher Pharma Services, an unnamed multinational that recently completed a major settle plate evaluation and, now, Novo Nordisk.

Together, these five customers alone represent a potential opportunity of 60–80 APAS instruments, according to Barnes.

Stacked pipeline

Once evaluations begin, the question becomes: how long before they lead to actual rollout?

“Customers will typically go through an evaluation that could take 4-6 months,” Barnes said.

“During this process, they are evaluating performance of APAS in addition to considering where APAS could be adopted throughout their global sites.”

To put this in perspective, in FY25 Clever Culture sold and shipped 9 instruments to AstraZeneca within a 12 month timeframe.

That kind of timeline is encouraging for investors, especially when you consider that more than 40 pharmaceutical companies are currently in Clever Culture’s active pipeline.

Collectively, those opportunities represent about $75 million in potential upfront sales, and another $15 million in recurring annual revenue, said Barnes.

For now though, the first APAS unit has landed in Denmark.

What happens next depends on performance, process, and plenty of plates.

But Clever Culture has the platform, the momentum, and now one more giant evaluating it with serious intent.

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Clever Culture Systems is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.

This story does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decision.