Obesity aim for Surgical Innovations

EXPECTED demand for its surgical equipment for operations to tackle obesity is expected to boost results for Yorkshire-based Surgical Innovations.

The Leeds group is aiming to build on the improved profitability and sales it delivered last year, said chairman Doug Liversidge at its AGM yesterday.

And a move to a one-site operation in Leeds has increased its floorspace three-fold and given it an increased focus, he said.

“2007 was a year in which we once again delivered improved levels of sales and pre-tax profits. To meet the anticipated worldwide growth in minimally invasive surgery and the increasing demand for our suite of obesity-related products, we made the strategic decision to invest in new facilities that have substantially increased our capacity.

“This relocation, our first since trading began in 1992, is complete and has tripled our floor space, consolidating all our operations into one location in
Leeds. The move and subsequent refit has, as expected, required significant capital expenditure and we look forward to the benefits that this will provide the group in the future,” he told shareholders.

The firm, which designs and manufactures innovative surgical devices, said that the launch of YelloPort Plus, a reusable device which helps access to the abdomen for operations, had been well received in the US where Surgical Innovations has a contract to supply it to one of the largest US hospital groups.

Mr Liversidge added: “Elsewhere we see good opportunities to establish ourselves within new and growing markets – in particular in Eastern Europe where closer integration with the EU has meant that trading conditions are becoming more favourable. Countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia are beginning to invest further in laparoscopic surgery and we are already receiving orders from those countries following successful trials.

He said that new products were planned to be launched later this year and the group was confident that its surgical equipment for operations aimed at treating obese people would be in high demand.

“There are approximately 1.2bn overweight people around the world according to the World Health Organisation and this offers us the opportunity to
further develop our instrumentation targeted at operations for obesity.”