Now, when a new year has begun, it is good time to look at the past and envision the future. For us at Reagena, 2022 was the year of celebration since the company reached a milestone of 35 years. Even after the growth and development during these years, the same core values are still the basis for our operations.
One of the Reagena’s founders, Markku Parviainen, dedicated a moment of his time to discuss the history and future of Reagena. Having stepped away from daily operations but still a board member of Reagena, he has had unique opportunity to witness the growth and development of Reagena over all these years.
How the story began?
The story began in 1987 when we founded the Erilab special laboratory which provided customers with demanding laboratory services. At the time, such special services were almost non-existent. In 1998, Erilab expanded into a group of companies and the subsidiary Reagena, founded in 1993, focused on the reagent business. In 2003, the name of the subsidiary was taken by the mother company and since then we have been known as Reagena. After a few different locations, all company operations were moved to our current property in Toivala in 2002. Over the years, our offering has evolved and expanded from early laboratory services to our own diagnostic and distribution products. In addition, the focus of our organization has changed more to sales and marketing.
How has Reagena’s product portfolio evolved?
Reagent manufacturing has been an important business area since the company’s early days. We took a big leap after the turn of the millennium when we launched the first self-developed rapid test for the detection of acute hantavirus infections. Since then, we have added several rapid tests to our portfolio, these tests are now a significant part of our offering. As a result of product development, we have among other things launched numerous solution-based products for quality assurance. We manufacture numerous solution products for industrial, research and diagnostic use on a contract manufacturing basis. Today, our offering has also been supplemented with numerous diagnostic products that we distribute in Finland. Since 2018, we have been the exclusive distributor of EUROIMMUN and Beckman Coulter Diagnostics products in Finland. Our products are innovative and of high quality. It should also be mentioned that our company was among the first in Finland to launch a CE marked product according to IVDD. Over the years, we have also received several awards from Frost & Sullivan.
How has the company changed and developed? What does the future look like?
The company has grown steadily, both in terms of product offering and personnel. We have always invested heavily in product development and will continue to do so. The operating conditions have changed over the years, increase in quality requirements as one example. For example, we have moved from the EU IVD products directive to a regulation that lays down product quality standards. We have been able to meet these challenges by training our staff. The company’s quality standards, which have been certified for twenty years, are based on the ISO system (ISO 9001 and ISO 13485), Our operations are in capable hands, and we will continue to build our operations on this foundation in the future. Despite the growth, we still operate like a family business.
Our internationalization began already in 1998 when we participated in the Medica fair held in Germany. Our plan is to continue investing in growth, we seek it by increasing our share of the international markets. We have been successful in the domestic markets, but we also aim to expand our home markets by new product groups and new user groups.
We invest in manufacturing equipment and aim to increase the manufacturing capacity for our own products. We have certain set strategic goals and the anticipated trajectory is a big leap forward. The targets are set but we want quality to be the core of our operations in the future too. The core values of our company are still the same as they have been since the company was founded: customer focus, quality, and community. We want to take good care of our customers and our own personnel. As we are still going strong after 35 years, we must have done something right.
Thank you for everyone who has contributed to Reagena’s story; our customers, partners, and our own staff. Together we continue our story and promote people’s health.