Less than two years after they first teamed up to distribute 3D-printed implants throughout the Asia-Pacific region—and only a few months after they expanded that partnership even further across the globe—Zimmer Biomet and Ossis are taking their relationship to the next level.
Zimmer Biomet announced Monday that it will acquire the New Zealand-based devicemaker, with an aim toward continuing to build out their partnership and bulking up Zimmer Biomet’s own orthopedics portfolio with the addition of Ossis’ customized implants.
“Combining Ossis’ more than 16 years of clinical experience and engineering expertise with Zimmer Biomet’s extensive network across Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa demonstrates our commitment to bring transformative medtech advancements to patients in need,” Sang Yi, president of Zimmer Biomet’s Asia Pacific group, said in the announcement.
“We are very pleased to partner with these patients and their physicians as we work toward our mission to alleviate pain and improve the quality of life for people around the world,” he continued.
Zimmer Biomet and Ossis first joined forces in mid-2021, when they struck an agreement that crowned Zimmer Biomet as the exclusive Asia-Pacific distributor of Ossis’ 3D-printed devices. Those include its flagship personalized implants for hip replacements that are especially complex, such as second-time replacements and those meant to treat bone tumors and trauma.
At the time, Sang Yi said in a company announcement that the team-up would give Zimmer Biomet’s existing “extensive network of orthopedic surgeons” in the region the option to use “patient-specific implants which are crafted with a combination of clinical and engineering expertise.”
After the apparent success of their first year together, the duo further expanded the agreement at the end of last year, stretching the deal’s footprint into Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the December 2022 re-up.
Financial terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, but the deal was unveiled shortly before Zimmer Biomet released a first-quarter earnings report detailing sizable year-over-year growth.
For the first three months of the year, the medtech giant raked in more than $1.83 billion in net sales, representing an increase of more than 10% compared to the same period last year, according to Tuesday’s report. Altogether, sans operating expenses that topped $1.5 billion and other deductions, the company’s quarterly net earnings totaled $232.5 million—many times the size of the $14.2 million net income it calculated during the first quarter of 2022.
The period also saw Zimmer Biomet close out its most recent acquisition before the Ossis buy. In that case, it offered $155 million upfront, plus another $120 million to be doled out throughout the first three years after the buyout, to absorb Embody, which makes collagen-based implants that are used to repair torn tendons and ligaments.