100% family-owned company, highly internationalized and innovative, with a discreet profile and strong leadership in highly specialized business segments. All these characteristics define Werfen, a group based in Plaza Europa in L'Hospitalet that is part of the select group of Catalan companies with a turnover exceeding 1.5 billion euros.
Werfen is also a clear example of a company that has benefited from the health crisis thanks to being fully oriented towards providing technology, medical material, and diagnostic systems and reagents for hospitals and laboratories. More than 1.5 million daily samples are analyzed worldwide with reagents and systems developed by Werfen.
The company, for example, manufactures and distributes worldwide key coagulation tests to determine the thrombotic risk of patients with covid-19. It is also a supplier of equipment that allows measuring blood oxygen saturation levels and monitoring the respiratory function of patients admitted to ICUs. Another of its best-selling products in the last year has been molecular diagnostic tests for detecting the disease in Spain and Portugal.
All this increase in demand derived from the pandemic has favorably impacted Werfen's income statement, which closed the 2020 fiscal year with a turnover of 1,696 million euros, 15.2% more than in the previous year. Even more significant has been the growth in results. EBITDA advanced 31.5%, to 479 million, and net profit soared 45%, reaching 261 million euros.
"Although it has been a complicated year for everyone, we are very proud of the effort made by the entire organization, contributing our grain of sand in this health emergency," says Marc Rubiralta, president of Werfen and visible head of the owning family.
More than 100 million for R&D
From the last fiscal year, the investment effort made by the company also stands out. In total, Werfen has invested 230 million euros ---17% more--- in both fixed assets and R&D, a chapter that has absorbed almost half of this budget, with 106.2 million. In recent years, in Catalonia, the company has focused its investments on the production complex it has in Lliçà d'Amunt.
In parallel to several commercial launches validated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the group launched the Werfen Academy in 2020, a distance learning platform to disseminate knowledge and bring its products closer to the end user.
Last year, Werfen increased its workforce by 3%, which now totals 5,382 people. The Catalan multinational diagnostics company operates directly in 30 countries, although its products reach more than one hundred markets. Western Europe generates 48% of its sales, followed by North America (25%) and Asia-Pacific (14%).
The Rubiralta family group has factories located in Catalonia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, as well as logistics centers in other countries such as Italy, China, and Mexico. The company specializes in the areas of coagulation, intensive care, and autoimmune diseases, and is one of the leaders in non-invasive diagnostic tests, that is, performed with biological samples or blood.
The group also produces reactive substances and biomaterials for different medical tests, is a provider of clinical software and, through its subsidiary Leventon, is one of the leaders in devices for infusion therapies, that is, for the administration of medications directly into a vein. Finally, through Izasa, it is a distributor of medical devices and all types of scientific instrumentation for hospitals and laboratories.