Axis-Shield, the Scottish-Norwegian maker of medical diagnostic kits, yesterday unveiled a surge in half-year profits and announced plans to add lipids to its Afinion testing system.

Axis-Shield, the Scottish-Norwegian maker of medical diagnostic kits, yesterday unveiled a surge in half-year profits and announced plans to add lipids to its Afinion testing system, opening up a potential £260m market for the company.

Chief executive Ian Gilham also said the outlook for the company, which has dual headquarters in Dundee and Oslo, remained "very positive".

Profit before tax for the six months to the end of June climbed to £1.6m, compared with £1.1m during the same period last year.

Revenues rose 28.8% to £42.7m in the half-year period, compared with £33.1m last time.

Gilham said the company's decision to add the test for lipids, such as cholesterol, to its cutting-edge Afinion point-of-care system, made the "perfect companion test" for its existing HbA1c kit, which helps to monitor the crucial long-term control of blood glucose levels in diabetes patients.

"Doctors usually recommend that diabetic patents monitor their lipids as well, because having diabetes can mean patients are more susceptible to conditions related to high-cholesterol - so it's the perfect companion test to the HbA1c test," he said.

Gilham added that the lipids "business would be run from Oslo" and that the company planned to launch the test in Europe in 2011 and in the US in 2012, following regulatory approval.

"We expected a market share of between 5% and 15%," he said. "It's all gated by the number of Afinion systems we have out there. There will be about 4500 by the end of this year and a further 3000 the following year."

Afinion, in which Axis-Shield has invested about £20m in research and development and capital expenditure costs, is designed for use in doctors' surgeries and hospital point-of-care sites.

The group yesterday also said it was focusing on developing further novel markers to enhance its portfolio.

"The commercialisation phase of the innovative products of our research is well under way at Axis-Shield and we look forward to reporting a continuation of our upward sales trend in the second half of the year," said the group.

Shares in the company, which was formed in 1999 through the merger of Dundee-based Shield Diagnostics and Norwegian competitor Axis, yesterday finished trading down 1.9%, or 6p, at 320p.