Middle Eastern pharmacy market opens up for Finnish NewIcon Oy

"This deal serves as a gateway to the Iranian market"

Health technology company NewIcon Oy from Kuopio, Finland, has signed a deal to supply an Iranian clinic operating in the city of Urmia with a fully automated dispensing cabinet. While worth hundreds of thousands of euros, this particular deal is just the beginning, as a local university hospital is also poised to start investing in pharmaceutical automation.

– This deal is a major milestone for us, and serves as a gateway to the Iranian market. Our client is the first Iranian clinic to embrace pharmaceutical automation, serving as a pioneer whose example is already being followed by a local university hospital, for example. All in all, there are approximately 250 hospitals in Iran that have expressed an interest in streamlining their pharmaceutical services with the help of automation, says NewIcon's Marketing Director Jori-Matti Savolainen.

The deal was struck as a result of an Iranian delegation's visit to Finland last autumn. At that point it had already been revealed that some of the economic sanctions imposed on Iran as a result of its nuclear programme were to be lifted. Upon finding out about the country's needs regarding health technologies, NewIcon Oy quickly arranged for a ten-person delegation, composed of ministers, hospital management and construction developers, to visit to Finland.

– There is a pent-up need for health care reform in Iran, making the country an excellent market for our products, potentially worth tens of millions of euros. In other words the situation looks promising. In fact, our factory in Kuopio has just been visited by another group of Iranian guests in early February. This time the delegation was composed of leaders from the hospital and pharmacy sectors in the Tehran area, says Savolainen.

More information:

Jori-Matti Savolainen
Marketing Director
NewIcon Oy
Tel. +358 50 3398 730
jori-matti.savolainen@newicon.fi

We also recommend reading our related bulletin from 14 October 2015: Iran interested in Finnish health technology http://newicon.fi/news/article/2015/10/iran_interested_in_finnish_health_technology/

NewIcon Oy is a health technology company founded in 2007 and located in Kuopio. It currently employs over 50 personnel. Turnover in 2014 was approximately 4 million euros and business is growing rapidly. NewIcon is the market leader in Finland in storage automation for pharmacies. The company’s roots, however, go back to industrial automation in which the company is a well-known supplier in extensive projects for large industrial players. In recent years, NewIcon has honed its expertise to become a professional in automation solutions for medicine suppliers and has delivered systems already to almost fifty pharmacies and hospital pharmacies. The company uses a certified ISO 9001 quality management system.