German medical device manufacturer B. Braun Melsungen is planning major investment of 150 million to 200 million euros ($170.1 million to $226.8 million) expand, modernize and develop its production plants in France by 2020.
In its recently unveiled ‘Strategy 2020' program, the group expects B. Braun France to double its exports, targeting new markets in Latin America and Asia, especially Malaysia, by 2020.
The French company will spend 100 million euros ($113.4 million) on the modernization and expansion of production, primarily at five of its plants across the country, according to President Marc-Alexander Burmeister.
In addition, B. Braun will sink 30 million to 50 million euros ($34 million to $56.7 million) into acquiring new technologies and boosting development in France over the next five years. A further 20 million to 50 million euros ($22.6 million to $56.7 million) has been earmarked to enable the French subsidiary to add value by expanding its services business.
Here, B. Braun France intends to increase the number of customers for the firm's dialysis centers by 1,000 to 2,000, according to the Melsungen, Germany-based group.
Meanwhile, the Boulogne-Billancourt-based company is continuing to complete earlier investment projects in France. Earlier this month, it inaugurated its sixth industrial site in the country. The 7 million euro ($7.9 million) plant consolidating operations of Suturex & Renodex, which produce surgical needles, is located at Carsac-Sarlat in the Périgord region of central southern France.
The Braun offshoot had 2014 sales in of 16 million euros ($18.1 million), exports 95 percent of its capacity and its objective is to double its export sales by 2023.
Other B. Braun France sites to benefit from the group's huge national investment project include the cardiovascular products plant at Chasseneuil-du-Poitou; an incontinence products unit at Nogent-le-Rotrou; a plant producing knee prostheses in Chaumont in eastern France and a site at Saint-Jean-de-Luz which supplies colostomy and stoma therapy products.
The French subsidiary, which already employs 2,000, also aims to continue growing through acquisition. “There are many SMEs in France in our field with good product, but which are unable to sell then globally. It is these [businesses] that we are targeting,” Burmeister was quoted as telling the French business daily Les Echos.
