Westmeath firm signs €10m deal with Europe's main private provider of emergency services
An Irish company has signed a deal worth €10m over five years with a leading private provider of emergency services in Europe.
The firm, Critical Healthcare, provides medical products and services to the pre-hospital market and ambulance providers in Ireland, the UK and Europe.
It has completed the deal with Falck, which is headquartered in Denmark and has operations in 35 countries where its 2,500 ambulances respond to four million emergency calls each year. The company also provides a large number of other prehospital services, including emergency helicopters and rapid response units with paramedics, nurses and doctors.
Founded 18 years ago by Seamus Reilly and Anne Cusack in the Midlands – where it is still headquartered – Critical Healthcare employs 22 full-time staff which is to at least double over the next five years as a result of the deal.
They are to supply the procurement platform, Medlogistix, which has dramatically improved the supply chain and procurement landscape for the National Ambulance Service of Ireland as well as many emergency service providers in the UK.
Critical Healthcare will now be rolling out Medlogistix for Falck across four countries – Demark, the UK, Germany and Spain.
The deal is estimated to be worth approximately €2m a year over a period of five years and means that the company’s export sales will increase from accounting for 1% of its business three years ago to 60% in two years’ time.
Dr Anne Cusack, Managing Director and Co-founder, Critical Healthcare, said: “We are absolutely thrilled with our collaboration with Falck and look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with them. This is a massive commitment by them to entrust this business with us and we are looking forward to being able to repay that trust by delivering a world-class, quality service to Falck across Europe.
“The impact of this collaboration is an important milestone in the company’s progression and represents significant growth for us over the coming years. We have 22 directly employed staff in Westmeath, where our business is growing strongly. But with the new Falck deal, and other ongoing work, that number is set to increase further – by around 30 new hires over the next five years.”
Seamus Reilly, Operations Director and Co-founder, Critical Healthcare, said: “We have already established an office in Germany, opened in January 2019, and initiated our first employee there. We have recruited four further people specifically as a result of the Falck deal.
"We are currently building the platforms for Germany and Denmark and our aim is to have all four countries operational no later than April. We were able to compete for and win this European contract because we were able to demonstrate the savings our package could offer across all elements of the procurement process.”
Critical Healthcare also got help from Enterprise Ireland during the procurement process as well as for its Business Process Innovation grant, which helped with the development of the Medlogistix.
