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Project part-financed by the European Union
One Yorkshire firm is at the forefront of prosthetic care after completing a Passport to Export course.
London and Sheffield-based Joint Replacement Instrumentation (JRI) Ltd, was founded in 1969 by distinguished orthopaedic surgeon, Ronald Furlong. A director of the orthopaedic Department at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, Furlong was the first to import prostheses into this country from Switzerland, setting up JRI in order to obtain an import license. The company began to produce its own prostheses and business boomed. By the year 2000, the Furlong® H-A.C. coated prosthesis had a 99 per cent success rate at ten years, the highest-ever achieved with any hip prosthesis. To date, more than 65,000 patients have benefited from this unique concept of prosthetic fixation.
Recent advances to the business have come about through maximising the firm’s export reach. As regular users of UK Trade & Investment’s services in previous years, JRI was quick to see the value of Passport to Export as an additional resource to support its development plans and signed up to the programme in August 2004. An ambitious action plan was then agreed with JRI’s export sales manager, Fritz Dittmann, designed to facilitate research, evaluation and hopefully penetration of six target markets: Canada, US, South Africa, India, Turkey and the Czech Republic.
And it certainly paid dividends. Turnover for the business in 2003/4 was £12 million. Of that, export sales accounted for £3 million. The forecast for 2006/7 exports is £4.6 million.
Collaboration on export started in 2004 with the commissioning of a £300 Overseas Market Introduction Service report to identify suitable agents/distributors and provide relevant market intelligence. A further report about Canada in 2005 produced a long list of potential distributors and group purchasing organisations. The report also provided a useful market overview with information on market size and structure, competition, the market pricing matrix, regulatory regime and recommended routes to market.
UK Trade & Investment provided £3,000 of match funding to support JRI’s export development action plan, which included attendance at US and Turkish conferences and exhibitions, pre-exhibition ads, and market visits to South Africa, Turkey and the US.
The result of this investment was export sales growth of more than £420,000 in two years, increasing more than £3.5 million (2003/4) to almost £4 million (2004/5) to £4,050,556 (2005/6). New markets penetrated included South Africa and Turkey, with good prospects of increased business from these two plus Australia in the next year.
JRI intends to develop existing markets in 2006/7 by providing more marketing support for its agent/distributor network, with plans to exhibit at several specialist orthopaedic international events. It is also considering applying for Export Marketing Research Scheme grant support to research one or two new markets (probably Japan and India) and it is considering joining a trade mission to India later this year.
Mr Dittmann says: “The most valuable part of the Passport for Export programme for us was not the funding (though that always helps) but the useful information and advice received from our experienced international trade adviser who was also able to provide very useful insight into other relevant services and support we had been totally unaware of.”
