A YORK laboratory is expanding East - and West - as it seeks to become the global leader in food intolerance testing.

York Nutritional Laboratories has launched a sister laboratory in Florida to deal with American custom.

And it has won a £30,000 order from a hospital in Korea, with chief executive John Graham travelling out to Hong Kong, Taiwan and China recently to cultivate more Far Eastern business.

The lab, which was named Evening Press Business of the Year in 1999, has also been growing rapidly in Britain, with turnover tripling in the last three years and an additional ten staff taken on in the past year.

It now conducts an average of 60 food intolerance tests a day, with many customers reporting major improvements in their health after changing their diets in line with test results.

Business has grown especially since the tests became available over-the-counter from pharmacies such as Lloyds, Coop, Superdrug and Asda.

The lab's test has been re-branded as the YORKTEST, with a website created under the same name. The former chief executive of the Trading Standards Institute, Allan Charlesworth, is hoping to raise greater awareness of food intolerance after being appointed commercial director of the lab.

He said he himself had been free of mild dermatitis on his hands after tests had shown a reaction to pineapple and bananas and he had removed them from his diet.

"I've always believed that diet plays a crucial part in a person's well-being," he said.

Mr Graham spoke of a major potential market in the Far East. "I quickly discovered that many people in the Far East were already very well aware of the role of food in developing and maintaining good health," he said.

"They were also extremely keen on the idea of testing blood to learn where individual food intolerances existed.

"Their thinking was really all about utilising western technology together with Chinese medicine to help get the best overall result for those who had chronic illness."

Updated: 09:52 Saturday, December 01, 2001