Norwood Abbey moves into Asia

As part of its strategy to move into the Asian region, Norwood Abbey has appointed a new commercial partner to market its range of laser assisted drug delivery products.

The Taiwan-based company, MedNet International, will take on responsibility for Norwood Abbey's sales, marketing and regulatory obligations in China, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and India.

The company's marketing director, Bernie Romanin, said the primary advantage of using an organisation such as MedNet was its ability to understand the local markets and business cultures on the ground, and to respond much more quickly and locally than the company could from Australia.

"We chose MedNet as a partner because it made sense to have an exclusive agreement with someone who already had a strong base in the area. They will bring local knowledge and benefits to all the roles we want including sales, invoicing, complying with regulatory requirements and marketing," he said. "Plus, they can react quicker, whereas it could take us hours to get to the area."

Romanin said the move was the first in the region, and heralded an expansion of Norwood Abbey's activity in Asia, especially as more of the company's products were granted FDA approval and hence local Asian approval as a consequence.

"We are very keen to access the Asian market, where even though access percentages can be small, the sheer numbers in places like China and India still mean very attractive markets," he said. "We will be taking a country-by-country approach, and expect to ship our first products to the region this quarter."