Seasons Greetings & Reflecting on 2025

2025 was a truly pivotal and historic year for Surgical Holdings.

January saw us launch our Hip Surgery catalogue, supporting the Elective Surgery reform plan. We then attended Arab Health for the first time, as part of a UK delegation with the Department of Business and Trade, aimed at developing and strengthening ties with existing and new partners, meeting with colleagues from Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines.

February was an extremely busy month; we supported the 10th Annual Operating Theatres Conference, discussing our extensive products and services for Operating Theatres. We also ran a new webinar, ‘Rongeurs, Retractors & Containers’ attended by over 50 people. Our latest initiative ICE (Inspection, Challenge and Evaluate) was launched, encouraging Sterile Services and Operating Theatre Professionals to scrutinise their current repairs. February also saw National Apprenticeship Week celebrated. Our sales team assembled at SH HQ for our first Sales Meeting of the year to set the strategy and review 2024. Our new fantastic web site was also launched.

In March we spotlighted Spinal Retractors, MCC/BB and Tontarra Kerrison Rongeurs then hit the road, exhibiting at BritSpine in Manchester. Our second webinar of the year was Back to Basics + – Surgical Instruments. Operating Theatre focussed again…we attended the 5th Annual Operating Theatres show at the Oval.

April saw us launching and promoting the new Medical Bees Fixys Retractor system, with a great demo video on LinkedIn and exhibiting at the AfPP Newcastle Regional Conference. We celebrated a cracking April with Easter and also Earth Day, which served as an important reminder of our duties to sustainable products and services. We announced our first SH Live day in Coventry, scheduled for July and concluded April with a fantastic bake sale, raising money for local charity Gold Geese.

May came along and some favourable weather allowed us to host our first SH Social BBQ of the year. We also said goodbye to Trevor, who retired after over 50 years in the medical device industry, incredible. Trevor provided some great reflections and advice for the younger generations. For the first time this year, we exhibited in Scotland, at the Golden Jubilee Hospital and the Decontamination seminar and slightly further south in Plymouth, we attended the AfPP Regional Study day. We then headed back North of the border to Aberdeen for another AfPP regional study day. A busy May for conferences saw us support NPAG once again for their Theatres and Decontamination conference in Coventry. We partnered with Able Futures to promote their mental health support.

A slightly more relaxed June, with the EMBE conference, back in Coventry again and also Builth Wells Endoscope Decontamination forum, where we introduced attendees to the MOLE and its amazing capabilities for remote visual inspection.

July and we were under way at our 2nd SH Live event, with presentations on Reusable instrument care, rigid and flexible endoscopes and grateful to have over 60 attendees. The next day, we also shared the big news of the year, that our family business of over 35 years had been acquired by the Stille AB group. Also an instrument company with incredible high quality pedigree and heritage dating back to 1841, plus group companies including the word renown Fehling Surgical Instruments and first in world class for Micro Surgery, S&T Surgical Instruments. Colleagues attended the IDSc Midlands regional study day, which we also presented at. We visited Westminster and represented the Stille Group for the first time at the ABHI Annual Parliamentary reception. SURGIFIX, our unique medical device repair portal saw a significant upgrade and re launch to a modern design and even better features and security. As a proud Southend company, we are delighted to sponsor the new ‘Talking Shrimpers’ Southend United Podcast. We also signed a distribution with Instrusafe for their innovative basket fixation solutions, a very exciting prospect.

The AfPP Annual conference event dominated a quieter August, with a great double booth and lots of engagement particular interest with a preview on Stille and Fehling Instruments. We also highlighted our exceptional refurbishment work and feedback of clinical staff. Our acquisition by Stille was also concluded. In house, we started work on our new ‘Unit 5’ Scope repair department. A significant milestone scheduled for completion in Early 2026, which will see the Scope Department relocate to their own building.

September and the arrival of Stille catalogues, meant we could start getting information of some of our new products out to colleagues and customers. The AfPP Regional conference in London was held and SH sponsored. Our sales team had their first training on the Fehling range, with some fascinating technical insight from Gerald Fehling, as soon as this was finished we headed to the Etihad Stadium for the Annual Northern Operating Theatres Conference, showcasing SH instruments, Bissinger and Hermann. A week later we were in Nottingham for the AfPP regional conference. We enjoyed the sunshine and a BBQ for our final SH Social of the year.

Early October and we celebrated 20 years – boy to man! for our Technician Dean. A tremendous achievement. We then headed west to Oxford for another AfPP regional conference and North to Sheffield, for our first official Stille focussed exhibition focussed on facial plastic surgery instrumentation. The CSC Study day came around and we had representation from SH, with a presentation on Containers ‘keep a lid on it’. With the sun fast disappearing, we installed our final solar panels to provide coverage across our entire manufacturing base. We look forward to enjoying solar powered manufacture and repair next summer!

November is always a busy conference month, as we attended Medica as part of the British Pavilion and for the first time as part of the Stille Group. Always a great opportunity to meet new partners and lots of meetings opportunities with suppliers and customers alike. The IDSc Annual Conference 2025 was held in Birmingham, where we were delighted to have Floris Lina attend with us and demo the Conteg container tester. Our booth focussed on solutions for Sterile services including Instrusafe, the MOLE and other testing and repair solutions. We headed across to central Birmingham for the BSSH hand show, again a great opportunity to show the Stille and SH instrumentation and ever popular Chirobloc.

So far in December, we have attended the BISMICS with the Fehling products and Gerald Fehling in attendance and enjoyed a fantastic SH Christmas party, well deserved after a very busy 2025 for the team. Our generous team also donated to local Charity Gold Geese with an excellent Christmas jumper day and donated over 60 toys to another local charity, this is truly representative of the amazing and caring team we have at SH. Well done all to colleagues across the business and best wishes to new colleagues across Europe and the World and I look forward to 2026!