Rayner, the British manufacturer and distributor of intraocular lenses (IOLs) and ophthalmic solutions, has established a regional office in Sydney to directly manage its product distribution. The company already has regional offices in Berlin, Madrid, Milan, New York, Portugal, Russia, Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur.
Tim Clover, CEO of Rayner.
Tim Clover, CEO of Rayner, said expansion into Australia is timely as it will enable the company to build closer relationships with local industry as a pipeline of new products enter the market.
“All of the countries we are in are significant markets with an interest in clinical outcomes and, therefore, markets which respond to companies being close to key opinion leaders (KOLs)/surgeons, which is something difficult to do through a distribution model.” He explained that working closely with surgeons and KOLs in Australia is particularly exciting because, “We do better when we have these opportunities to listen”.
Elaborating on this he said, “Rayner has been growing rapidly in recent years despite COVID headwinds and we have an interesting pipeline of new products for ophthalmologists including Omidria, the acquisition of which we announced in December.
“These two elements give us confidence to expand our direct reach in the correct profile of a country such as Australia. Of course it really helps to share a language (and partly) a culture,” said Mr Clover.
With staff relocated to Sydney from the United Kingdom to help with set up, and Lisa Farquhar – an experienced local ophthalmology executive – leading the team, Mr Clover anticipates Rayner will be ready to serve ophthalmologists early this year.
“Given that we are known for our ultra-stable toric IOLs, among others, we hope to be able to offer a compelling service and price combination to surgeons.
“Our range of aberration neutral monofocals and torics will be available, as well as our premium trifocal and extended monofocal IOL RayOne EMV. The latter was codeveloped with Professor Graham Barrett and is our fastest growing product world-wide. All lenses come in our patented RayOne preloaded injector system, which features only two steps and a 1.65mm parallel nozzle,” Mr Clover explained.
RayTrace, a popular lens calculator in Australia, will be maintained, as will RayPRO, a free app-based patient outcome reporting system similar to Strava, for eye surgery.
Alongside these staples, Rayner plans to extend its range to include ophthalmic viscosurgical devices and dry eye products (AEON) currently offered to markets outside Australia.
“Having a direct presence certainly makes this easier, as regulatory hurdles become more and more difficult,” he explained.
Asked about products we can expect to land he said, “I would love to find a way to bring Omidria to Australia with its combination of myosis control, cystoid macular oedema reduction and non-opioid pain management. Our research and development team also has ambitious plans around polyfocality and accommodation.
“In the nearer terms we plan to launch RayOne EMV Toric this year which will be important in Australia.”
Rayner has plans to offer more direct support to surgeons and to work with them on the development of new products.
“The basic economics of our industry mean that smaller companies sell through distributors who take a smaller margin but sell lots of different products. This logically means less individual product expertise and less money available for market development, clinical edu ion and professional development. By launching direct, I hope that we offer more expert representatives offering deep insights, more opportunities for clinical studies, podium presentations and clinical edu ion.
“One of the elements which differentiates Rayner is our collaborative research and development programmes, a great example of which is RayOne EMV with Prof Barrett. Virtually all of our products originate with a great idea from a surgeon and so we have constructed an open collaborative research and development network, which enables progress in this open ecosystem.
“Despite having only 18 in-house PhDs or engineers, we have a network of over 100 in universities/agencies and hospitals who work on our product development. We would love to see more Australian surgeons represented in these teams and believe that they could be a rich source of fabulous new ideas.
“That has to be a win-win,” Mr Clover concluded.
