Healthcare review

Our Healthcare business area includes the Dental, Drug Delivery and Surgery segments, which design, produce and market a broad range of products such as dispensers, cartridges, mixers, tips, syringes, pen injectors for subcutaneous delivery of biological products and delivery devices for bone repair and tissue treatment. These devices are used in a variety of applications by our end customers. In the Dental business, our products are used for prosthetics, restoratives, anesthetics and aesthetics. The pen injectors produced and marketed by our Drug Delivery segment are used in fertility and growth hormone treatments, and to deliver medical substances to treat diabetes, osteoporosis and rare diseases. The delivery devices designed, produced and marketed by our Surgery segment are used by tissue banks for bone repair and bone cement in trauma surgeries, and by pharma customers with other medical substances for internal and external wound healing.

Key figures

Dental – Continued destocking due to the new capital allocation focus of customers

Revenues in the Dental market segment were CHF 106.2 million in 2023 compared to CHF 125.1 million in 2022, a decline of -13.3% on an organic basis.

In the second half of 2023, the Dental market segment entered a new phase of customer destocking that was initially reported in the first half of 2022, going beyond the correction of overstocking seen after the pandemic and ahead of 2022 price increases. All Dental market participants, end users as well as direct customers, adopted a new capital allocation focus prompted by increasing interest rates. Global supply chains stabilized at the same time, making it increasingly expensive and unnecessary to hold large inventories.

Given that the Dental end market has continued to grow in the meantime, albeit at a more modest 1% to 2% rate, we expect a normalization of our revenues during the course of 2024 as customer inventories attain their new equilibrium.

Innovation is a top priority to delivering game-changing solutions and growth. In the second half of 2023, we launched the ZerofloX^TM micro applicator, indicated for a variety of dental applications and dental materials. This injection molded applicator can be used to apply medication or bonding agents during clinical procedures without the risk of contamination of the cavity with fibers or flocks. Early in 2024, ZerofloX was awarded the 2024 Research Award by Dental Advisor.

Key to our growth ambition in Dental remains our focus on product expansion, the development of new products for adjacent applications and the entry into new markets.

Drug Delivery – Record full-year revenues reflecting our strong device and project pipeline

The Drug Delivery market segment achieved record full-year revenues of CHF 53.6 million compared to CHF 47.0 million in 2022. This represents organic growth of 18.6%, reflecting  our strong device and project pipeline. Last year saw the commercial launch of our D-Flex injector pen, with the launch customer making first shipments to the European Union. This device bridges the gap between fixed and variable-dose pens, and paves the way for digitally connected commercial devices. A human factors study on PiccoJect demonstrated a strong end user preference for our autoinjector in terms of handling and convenience compared to competitor products. 

Our Drug Delivery market segment collaborates closely with existing and new customers in the pharma- and biopharmaceutical industries. In 2023, medmix won eight new projects and entered a strategic investment in AARDEX, a global player in digital medication adherence in clinical trials, with a stake representing 25% of AARDEX capital. This step reinforces medmix’ Drug Delivery business under the Haselmeier^TM brand. The unique combination offers innovative solutions that simplify patient dosing management in clinical trials and thus provide more accurate study results.

Surgery – Continued strong growth from the conversion of tissue banks

In 2023, our Surgery segment delivered revenues of CHF 17.2 million compared to CHF 12.8 million a year earlier. This jump of 34.2% on an organic basis represents an all-time high revenue. After the Surgery segment recovered strongly from the pandemic-induced reduction in elective surgeries in 2022, its double-digit growth path continued to benefit from robust underlying market growth as well as the conversion of tissue banks from bulk bags of allograft to medmix syringes that our customers prefill with allograft, offering surgeons a significant convenience benefit. The tissue bank revenue recorded a growth rate of 40.8%.

Our Surgery segment specializes in the design and production of surgical delivery devices of biomaterials for trauma, bone repair and tissue regeneration. In 2023, we continued to focus on growing our business by collaborating with tissue banks and large original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers on designing and developing tailor-made solutions for managing their biomaterials.

For the benefit of US customers of all three segments in Healthcare, we signed a lease in 2022 for a new production facility in Atlanta, USA. This project is on track in terms of time and budget, aiming for ISO and FDA certification in Q2 2024.  We aim to start serving our Surgery customers from this new facility from mid-2024, strengthening our presence in the world’s largest healthcare market. With fully equipped clean room operations, this site is set to serve our Healthcare customers with a North America focus.

Definition of alternative performance measures (APMs)

For the definition of the alternative performance measures, please refer to the chapter alternative performance measures.