KARL STORZ – strengthens the flexible endoscopy business

Tuttlingen, Germany - KARL STORZ GmbH & Co. KG has announced its agreement with XION GmbH to take over the Berlin-based company's flexible endoscopy and video endoscopy business. Sybill Storz, Managing Director of KARL STORZ, sees this expansion as a major boost to the company's product portfolio. The strong KARL STORZ brand with its worldwide network is thus profitably integrating the technology specialists from Munich. KARL STORZ is the worldwide market leader in the field of minimally invasive surgery and rigid endoscopy. Today the KARL STORZ Group, with its headquarter in Tuttlingen, has a staff of approx. 2,900 at its 30 production and distribution companies around the world.

This takeover will serve to further consolidate KARL STORZ's flexible endoscopy product range. Flexible endoscopes are used to perform minimally invasive examinations in a wide variety of medical fields. Such endoscopic examinations are normally conducted whilst the patient is under local anesthetic, however procedures such as the insertion of a 3-millimeter-thin flexible endoscope into the nose do not require anesthesia. Larger endoscopes are used for bronchoscopy and for a wide range of gastrointestinal examinations (esophagus, stomach, intestines). KARL STORZ is anticipating that this takeover will significantly strengthen these last two fields in particular.

Video endoscopy describes a technique by which a video chip on the tip of the endoscope produces an image which is electronically transmitted and displayed on the video monitor. This technique produces an image quality which corresponds to 500,000 pixels. Previous technologies have only been able to offer 10% of this resolution using complicated and costly fiberoptic technology. With such technology the image was optically transmitted from the body and only subsequently recorded via an external video camera. The newly purchased business units are specialists in video endoscopy technology and have established a full range of video endoscopes for bronchoscopy and gastroenterology.

Sybill Storz stressed that this takeover will serve to secure jobs at both the main plant in Tuttlingen and the new production location in Munich. The company's Managing Director went on to state: "We are exploiting synergies and are thus in a position to further expand overall capacity".

Tuttlingen, dated 23.12.03

KARL STORZ GmbH & Co. KG
Mittelstrasse 8
78532 Tuttlingen
Germany
+49 (0)7461 708-0
info@karlstorz.de