Production of the heating technology line, incl. Venticell® IL industrial line and steam sterilizers for laboratories and pharmaceuticals within a single company is a unique matter and none of our competitors can offer such a wide range of products from their portfolio as defined.
We realized this advantage several years ago when dealing with our sales representatives and customers in different countries of the world. Gradually, we chose several promising heating technology dealers interested in further sales growth, the ability to sell high-end devices and service them, and we tried to attract and inspire them to jointly invest in the parallel development of sales and steam sterilizers.
Today we know that this is a really long-term project where it is not enough to have the good will to expand the product range, but it also requires repeated sales training and support for local dealers in dealing with major customers, helping to build their market image among the best suppliers, obtaining the right to participate in tenders for renowned customers from the pharmaceutical industry, training of service technicians for steam sterilization, certification of production and deliveries of pressure chambers, etc. On the other hand, this activity allowed us to deepen our mutual cooperation with local partners and involve the management of these companies or their owners in the sale of our products. Therefore, the first sales results did not let us wait for long, but the real significant increase in sales usually appears only after a few years of cooperation.
Our joint sale, for example in 2015, amounted to several tens of millions of crowns in five countries of Central and East Asia (India, Bangladesh, Thailand, China, South Korea) in the area of laboratories and pharmaceutical industry, with only about 14% share of steam sterilizers . In 2018, it was more than 100 million crowns (approx. +30%) and the share of steam sterilizers, i.e. complex and expensive devices with high added value, increased to more than double - approximately 36%. The first half of this year was even better in this respect when we managed to achieve even better results than in the comparable period of the last year and the share of steam sterilizers, which is important for us, reached about 50% in sales for the first five months!
The newly acquired references in the field of heating technology open the door to customers even for steam sterilization supplies and vice versa, and increased joint sales further deepen our cooperation and personal relations with local dealers.
We do believe that in the future we will be able to acquire more of our dealers for this successful project and the laboratory and industry segment will help us significantly to achieve our planned goals in the forthcoming years.
06. 08. 2019