The PROTEOR Group, St. Apollinaire, France, is celebrating its 100-year anniversary.
The company was founded in 1913 by three craftsmen who set up a workshop in the Burgundy region of France to supply prosthetists and orthotists with forged and wooden parts. Due to the nearby Saône River, the founders had a ready supply of all the willow they needed to craft their devices. At that time, the company specialized in the supply of custom-made prostheses for individuals with disabilities but in order to meet the needs of the World War I amputees, it extended its activities to include the design of prosthetic components. The Clarke firm took over the workshop in 1916 and streamlined production. Then the French-based orthopedics company Leon Marx acquired Clarke and used the Burgundy workshop as its main manufacturing center.
In 1943, the company was again taken over, this time by the grandfather of the PROTEOR Group’s current Chairman and CEO, Michel Pierron, and in 1949 the company was renamed PROTEOR, in reference to prosthetics and orthopedics. Ten years later, the company experienced a milestone when it set up a research department and began the industrial design of O&P components. The company began exporting products in 1976.
The PROTEOR Group came into being in subsequent years through the takeover of an orthopedic fitting firm in Luxembourg, and then through acquisitions and start-ups in the Czech Republic, in Canada, and more recently in China and in Morocco. At the same time, it has extended its range of operations.
Today PROTEOR Group is still an independent family-owned company that now employs more than 660 people who provide products and services to patients, prosthetists, orthotists, and healthcare professionals.
