CMA-Medina (Flanders) and Biogroup (France) join forces
Gino De Raedt and Frederica Verheyden – an entrepreneurial couple from Flanders – have transferred their clinical lab group CMA-Medina to Biogroup (France). This way, Belgium’s and France’s largest private groups for clinical blood analyses are joining forces.
Routine and specialized analyses
Founded in 1978, CMA-Medina was until now in the hands of Straco, the investment vehicle of De Raedt and Verheyden. The lab group employs around 800 people and operates 8 labs in Flanders. Together with Biogroup founder and clinical biologist Stéphane Eimer, the business family will hold the majority of the shares in Biogroup.
Like CMA-Medina, the French group offers routine and specialized analyses for clinical biology across France: from its home base in the ‘Grand Est’ (Alsace and Burgundy) to Greater Paris, the southeast of France and Corsica. In France, Biogroup is already the largest player in a market with an annual turnover of EUR 6 billion. In 2018, the group achieved a turnover of EUR 600 million. By means of comparison: in Belgium, of which Flanders is the northern region, CMA-Medina is the main leader in a market worth over EUR 1 billion.
European giant
The transaction, one of the biggest deals of 2020 in Belgium, makes the combined Belgian-French lab group a major European player alongside companies such as German Synlab, Swiss Unilabs and French sector peer Cerba. The new French-Belgian group not only seeks to strengthen its position in both home markets, but also aims to expand its business in other European countries in the long run.
“Over the past 5 to 10 years, Biogroup has completed an excellent course of growth and consolidation in France,” says Nicolas De Quinnemar, CEO of CMA-Medina. The combination of both groups will further improve our offering to doctors and patients.”
At full capacity in the face of COVID-19
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Flanders-based CMA-Medina labs have been operating at full capacity. “We carry out both PCR tests and serological tests to determine whether people have produced COVID-19 antibodies,” De Quinnemar explains. “It goes without saying that, in doing so, we have generated additional turnover. However, this situation has also put a lot of pressure on our organization, because we had to recruit and train more people and because we need to respect tight deadlines when it comes to processing COVID-19 analyses.”
In addition to blood analyses, CMA-Medina specializes in pathology analyses (skin disorders), toxicology, preventive medicine and veterinary medicine. As such, CMA-Medina can perform a total of over 1,000 different tests.
Reported by
De Tijd newspaper
