"There is hand-held equipment available which can identify bacterial spores such as anthrax in only six to eight minutes," said he chief executive of Veritide Ltd, Andrew Rudge.
The Wellington headquarters of ACC, in Molesworth Street, and nearby shops and cafes were emptied after ACC staff opened mail containing a white powder.
A dozen workers had to go through a decontamination process, and the ACC mailroom and reception will remain closed until the powder is identified -- but the incident controller, Simon Perry said he was unsure how long the testing would take.
But Mr Rudge, said physicists at Canterbury University last year launched a commercial detector to identify bacterial spores in a matter of minutes.
The detector which is sold internationally by his company could have quickly shown investigators whether the white powder contained bacterial spores such as anthrax, he told NZPA.
He expected that in future large companies which did not want their operations disrupted would be customers for the devices
Mr Rudge said he could not discuss his company's dealings with military officials, but neither the NZ police nor the Fire Service were yet using the detector.
He said the hand-held device was ideal for the "white powder incidents" which occur hundreds of times a week around the world.
There have been over 20,000 such incidents in the United States alone, where five people, including two postal workers, have died in the few genuine attacks.
Experts have said that in most cases a laboratory identification of a mystery white powder can take three days -- which would probably be an undesirable wait if someone was exposed to real anthrax spores.
Facilities which have been expanded at the Centre for Emerging Diseases and Biosecurity at Wallaceville, partly to cope with threats from bioterrorism attacks -- including anthrax -- global epidemics, and incursions of new human diseases are due to be officially opened on Thursday.