17 December 2019

As part of the Sherbrooke International program, selected Sherbrooke businesses have received direct support for their development outside Québec. Sherbrooke International is proud to encourage and support Sherbrooke businesses to shine internationally. After each of these significant projects, participants are invited to share their experiences through a blog post.

IBIOM participated in the Arab Health Exhibition in Dubai in January 2019 to explore the Middle East market. This Life Sciences company met with a variety of stakeholders – distributors, hospital executives, manufacturing representatives, regulatory advisors – who have provided guidance for its future exporting endeavours.

Founded in 1978 and based in Sherbrooke since 2007, IBIOM has been designing, manufacturing, and selling high-quality ergonomic products for health professionals and patients.

For several years, IBIOM has been receiving regular requests from the Middle East. These requests must be declined due to a lack of knowledge of the market and related rules and regulations. What certifications are required? Who are the reliable distributors to work with? How should they be labelled? Etc.

Thanks to the support of Sherbrooke Innopole, we were able to join several Canadian companies to validate the answers on site. The Arab Health Medical Exhibition is the largest trade fair of its kind and is held in Dubai. We also took the opportunity to visit health facilities in Dubai. We were able to see who our competitors are in these markets, as well as the kinds of products purchased by these centres.

This business trip enabled us to better understand what to expect before we begin exporting.

Since our return to Sherbrooke, with this new information, we have invested time and money in CSA certification of our main products, the implementation of ISO13485 certification, and the construction of our new plant, which will enable us to increase our production capacity. These three projects are taking us closer to our international goals.

This experience helps us confirm our export strategy in the United States, where we plan to register for various events over the next few years and, in doing so, increase our international visibility.

>> ibiom.com

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