Acteon Group opens local office

Dental products manufacturer, Acteon Group, headquartered in France, has opened a new office in Sydney to further develop marketing, product support and distribution of its products for the Australian and New Zealand markets.

Acteon manufactures many name brands in the dental market including Satelec, Pierre Rolland and Sopro. The company has also recently acquired De Gotzen, an Italian manufacturer of intraoral x-rays.

Heading the new local operation is Ms Sandy Junior, who has been appointed general manager. Ms Junior brings over 15 years of experience in the dental industry to the role. She is joined by Mr Phil Fitzgibbon, who will work as National Product Manager for Satelec. Mr Fitzgibbon has an impressive 30 years experience in the dental community. Completing the team is Ms Ariana Rosado, who brings experience in international business and marketing and will co-ordinate the marketing and communications.

According to Ms Junior, the impetus for the local office came from the need to firstly provide direct training, education and support to dental professionals and distributors in Australia. In addition, after 20 years in the market, Acteon felt it was very important to establish a physical presence in the country.

"Professionals and distributors can now get access to timely support from someone close to home," Ms Junior said. "Furthermore, the decision was also highly influenced by the need to increase the choice of products available to dental professionals in Australia, irrespective of geographical location or specialty.

"Gunz Dental continue to sell our complete product line in Australia and New Zealand and retain the exclusive distribution of the Pierre Rolland range of products.

"We have also formed a close relationship with A-dec as some of our products are available as options on their equipment. The Satelec ultrasonic scalers and mini-LED curing lights, plus the Sopro intraoral cameras, are all available as integrated options on A-dec units.

"We will also look at ways to expand our sales through other distribution channels in the future to increase the reach of our products into the market. Overall, however, our goal is to offer increased support to our customers and increased support to our distributors with training, education and marketing."

Acteon Group turned over more than Euro 100 million in 2006 and employs more than 680 staff including 95 in the Asia Pacific region.

Satelec manufactures electronic equipment for dentistry including polishers, ultrasonics, micro motors, curing lights, autoclaves, electrosurgery equipment, osteo-tomes (Piezotome) and portable equipment.

Pierre Rolland manufactures pharmaceuticals and medical devices for dentistry including the patented expasyl, triplex syringes (Riskontrol), anaesthetics, impression materials, cements, materials for endo, perio and restorative.

Sopro manufactures intra-oral imaging and endoscopy products including intra-oral cameras and digital x-ray systems (Sopix).