FH Industrie (Quimper, 106 employees, turnover: €15 million, FH Ortho group – Mulhouse) designs and manufactures 250,000 orthopedic prostheses in surgical metal or high-precision polymer every year. The company is the 24th largest orthopedic manufacturer worldwide (out of 250) and the 3rd largest French manufacturer.
The French market, which accounts for 75% of its sales, is stable, but prices are regulated and experiencing decline. It must therefore find markets elsewhere: Australia, South America, Germany and especially the United States where it aims to take a 2% market share, which would allow it to record an annual growth of 25% and reach a turnover of €23 M in 2022. But to face the 4 American giants who hold 70% of the world market, the Breton SME must develop and invest.
In order to win export markets, it has launched an ambitious programme. At the human level, FH Industrie had 84 employees in 2016, 106 at the beginning of 2018 and still anticipates the creation of around 20 jobs by 2020 or 2021. Meanwhile, it is investing €4.5 M in new machines to modernise its site but also in an extension to increase its production capacity.
FH Industrie takes care to continuously develop an already complete range of prostheses: hip, knee, shoulder, foot, spine, ligaments and now ankle, and to make prostheses perfectly adapted to the patient thanks to digitisation of the medical imaging and production by 3D printer.
Sources : Ouest France entreprise – 19/12/2017, Journal des Entreprises – 07/02/2018