ALPHARMA Animal Health, of Fordingbridge, is celebrating two successes.

The company, which is 100 years old, has achieved the accreditation ISO 9001:2000 and Investors in People status.

The ISO accreditation follows an audit and covers manufacture, assembly, packing, sales, after sales and marketing of veterinary medicinal products for the animal health industry.

Dr Lydia Brown, country director, said: "We believe it is a major achievement and benchmarks the high quality of Alpharma against an internationally recognised standard. "Every aspect of the business has been audited, from receipt of raw material into our warehouse, to analysis of customer satisfaction questionnaires.

"We believe that having been granted this recognition, it will help us to compete globally and our customers can be assured that all products have been manufactured to stringent global quality standards."

Turning to the IIP accreditation, Dr Brown said: "Two of our routine practices in Fordingbridge were circulated to all the assessors in our region as representing exceptional practice.

"One was how we held regular team meetings - a stand-up meeting, never lasting more than 15 minutes, which the whole team attends - and the other was how we feed back competitor activity to the team.

"We applied for IIP recognition because we felt we were doing all of the things necessary to achieve the award and the team wanted to see how we performed against an external standard."

The two successes have capped a notable year for Alpharma.

It sold its 300 millionth dose of vaccine into the Scottish and Irish aquaculture industry in September.

Seminar to focus on company data protecion

THE subject of the next seminar to be hosted by Cravenplan Computers of Swallowcliffe is protecting your company records from disaster.

The free seminar takes place on January 8.

Cravenplan says that more firms experience data loss over Christmas and the New Year than at any other time of year.

"Don't wait until after the seminar before backing up your data - do it now," says Cravenplan's managing director Chris Stanbury.

"And make coming to the seminar your New Year resolution," he said.

The one-hour seminar, which starts at 1pm, discusses topics including what to protect - not just computers, looking for weaknesses, how to back up, the costs involved, storage of backups and testing procedures.

For more information and to book a place ring 01747 858000.