Cordlife subsidiaries in Hong Kong, Malaysia obtain re-accreditations
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Cordlife has been grappling with the financial impact of refunding customers in Singapore for damaged cord-blood units.
PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO
Vivienne Tay
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SINGAPORE - Cordlife said on July 25 that its Hong Kong and Malaysian subsidiaries have received re-accreditations from the Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies.
The association sets standards for blood banking, transfusion medicine, blood management and cellular therapies. Cordlife Hong Kong obtained its seventh re-accreditation, while Malaysia-based StemLife received its fourth, said the group.
StemLife also underwent an assessment and re-certification for ISO 9001:2015 – an international standard for quality management systems.
The move comes as StemLife expands its range of services beyond cord-blood banking. This includes a partnership with Loh Guan Lye Specialists Centre to offer peripheral blood stem cell banking services to patients with cancer or blood disorders. It also tied up with Medixcell Laboratory to harvest and bank mesenchymal stem cells from a newborn’s umbilical cord.
Cordlife Philippines is also expanding its services to include diagnostics tests and routine prenatal screenings.
In June, Cordlife sank into the red with a net loss of $11.6 million for the three months ended March 31, versus a net profit of $1.2 million in the same period a year ago.
The beleaguered private cord blood bank has been grappling with the financial impact of refunding customers whose cord blood samples were compromised by irregular temperatures in its storage tanks.
The incident led to a six-month suspension notice from Singapore’s Ministry of Health in November 2023, which was later extended by another three months starting June 15, 2024.
Refunds and waivers of subsequent fees Cordlife offered on April 8 to active clients with stored cord-blood units led to a revenue reversal of about $9.7 million in the first quarter of 2024. This included the recognition of about $500,000 in contract liabilities related to future storage obligations for its affected clients.
Excluding the refund’s financial impact, the group’s revenue for the first quarter would have been about $9.4 million, a 33 per cent decline from the year-ago figure.
Negative publicity from the saga also affected Cordlife’s operations in other markets. Compared with the year-ago period, the number of samples stored in the first quarter fell by about a third in Indonesia, India and Malaysia.
Cordlife’s shares last traded at 15.5 cents on July 17.
