Dear colleagues,
We are off to a good start to the year. Performance is strong across most of our businesses, momentum is real — and I want you to feel that, because you are the ones who made it happen.
The start of the year is always busy on the road: trade shows, member days, education sessions. Meeting customers face to face, reconnecting with colleagues, engaging with the broader industry. For me personally, these visits are among the most energising parts of the job — a reminder of the attractive offering we have and the trust the veterinary community place in us.
The team in Nextmune achieved the best quarter ever with strong growth and profitability and continued to work on exciting innovation that can impact the health of millions of animals.
In April, we welcomed Lotta Lundaas as our new Head of MedTech. The leadership and experience she brings will be important as we continue to strengthen orthopedics and build on the success in our dental business — it's great to have her onboard.
And then what I am most pleased about: our employee survey in February came back with a record-high participation rate and an eNPS of 35 — a strong improvement. Culture is high on my agenda, and seeing it move in the right direction means a great deal. The feedback you give us shapes how we lead and improve, and I expect every team leader to work with the results. Thank you for engaging honestly.
Finally, we welcomed three new businesses to the group. I-Vet marks a significant step for Indical as we strengthen companion animal diagnostics — and Vetsave brings VetFamily into Ireland for the first time. VetFamily also welcomed the innovative Danish clinic group Favna.
More exciting news to come!
Thank you for your commitment and passion for animal health!
Nextmune's Innovation Hub is rewriting the rules of veterinary drug development, with multiple new products in the pipeline and one already going through registration proceedings.
The veterinary pharmaceutical world is full of great ideas that never become great medicines. Small biotech companies, universities, and independent researchers regularly develop compelling drug candidates, but the road to a licensed product is long, expensive, and out of reach for most. Nextmune Innovation Hub exists to change that.
By combining active innovation scouting with the compounding expertise of Bova, a business acquired by Nextmune in 2022, the Hub offers a fundamentally different route to market. Rather than waiting years for full regulatory approval, promising candidates can be brought to veterinarians as compounded medicines within 3 to 12 months. This gets products into clinics faster, generates real-world validation, and creates a revenue stream that can help fund full registration down the line. It's a model that works for innovators, for patients, and for Nextmune, and as far as we know, no one else in the industry is doing it.
Building the product engine of the future
With multiple products in development, several being sold as compounded drugs, and one already moving through the registration process, the Innovation Hub is becoming exactly what it was designed to be: a product innovation engine for the future of veterinary medicine. Recently, Nextmune also strengthened its R&D team with a handful of scientists with expertise in biological medicines, giving Nextmune the ability to develop innovative biologic treatments entirely in-house.
At the end of March, we brought together 21 talents for our face-to-face module in Vimian’s high potential program.
21 participants travelled in from across the globe, uniting talent from our different segments under one roof for three days of learning, challenge, and genuine connection. The program is designed to push our high potentials beyond the boundaries of their day-to-day roles, sharpening leadership capability through action-based learning across themes including coaching and feedback, conflict management, business acumen, and personal impact, while broadening their understanding of Vimian's business and forging the cross-entity relationships that make us stronger together.
But some of the most valuable moments are harder to put on an agenda. The conversations that spill over into dinner, the candid exchanges between peers from different backgrounds, that is where a great deal of the real development takes root. To everyone who made the journey and showed up fully: thank you. Your commitment to this program, and to each other, is exactly what makes it work.
Everyone at Vimian who is working on a computer should have access to company approved AI tools that make your work faster and better. If you have not yet had an AI Activation session or do not know which tools are approved for your work, reach out to your manager or ai-taskforce@vimian.com.
On 13 April Lotta Lundaas started her new job as Head of MedTech at Vimian. We met with Lotta!
On 2 March we welcomed Daniele Franzini and his 75 team members from I-Vet, one of the leading providers of companion animal diagnostics in Italy. Read more.
Founded in 2012, I-Vet has built the largest network of veterinary diagnostic laboratories in Italy, offering everything from laboratory diagnostics to in-clinic solutions and scientific education. What truly differentiates I-Vet is not just scale or technology, but a deep commitment to supporting veterinarians in their daily clinical practice, helping them make faster, more informed clinical decisions, with animal welfare always at the center.
Joining Vimian was a natural fit. We recognized a partner that shares our values and long-term vision, combining strong entrepreneurial leadership with a genuine commitment to advancing animal health through innovation and scientific rigor. Being part of an international group allows us to accelerate our mission while preserving the culture and identity that have defined I-Vet from the start.
Our ambition is to evolve from a diagnostic service provider into a true strategic partner for veterinarians, investing in technology, education, and people. As part of Vimian, we look forward to bringing the expertise developed in Italy to a broader international stage, always guided by the human values at the heart of what we do.
Sustainability at Vimian is about more than compliance, it's about finding the intersection where responsible business and commercial growth reinforce each other. We sat down with Head of Sustainability Ellen Broström to find out more.
Tell us a bit more about yourself
I'm an engineer by training and I joined Vimian through INDICAL (our diagnostics segment) and eventually got the opportunity to shape the group sustainability function from scratch. My journey shows that you can genuinely develop your career across the group, moving from a segment role to a group-level position.
Vimian's ambition is to create a sustainable leader in animal health, and for us, that means connecting sustainability directly to our core business. We've structured our work around three focus areas: Animals, People, and Planet.
We arrived at these through a materiality analysis, essentially asking where we have the greatest impact. That's the lens we use. It's easy for companies to organize a beach clean-up or plant trees, and that's a lovely thing to do, but it doesn't have a strong connection to our strengths as a business. I believe it’s important to focus on where we can have the most positive impact.
Animals
On the Animal side, it's fundamentally about improving animal health through innovation, education and responsible treatments. We launched 94 new products last year, and we trained over 65,000 veterinarians, not just so they can treat more animals, but so they can treat them better and apply products more effectively. We're also starting to look seriously at antimicrobial resistance, which is one of the biggest global health challenges facing both animals and humans. We currently have around 300 products that support the reduction of antibiotic and antiparasitic use.
People
On the People side, where Bart Bremer (our Chief People Officer) is in the lead, it's about creating a great place to work. We run our employee survey twice a year, and our employee Net Promoter Score has moved from 30 up to 35, with a target of 50. What I think makes the survey really effective is that local teams work directly with their own results and build their own improvement plans. It creates accountability across the whole group rather than waiting for direction from the top. Our leadership programs are another concrete example, we now have over 80 leaders and talents who've participated.
Planet
On the Planet side, we've reduced our carbon emissions by 36% since we started measuring in 2022, while also growing the business. The main drivers have been transitioning to fossil-free electricity and shifting our vehicle fleet toward electric and hybrid options where it makes sense given geography and driving patterns.
In addition to the focus areas above, sustainability is also about maintaining stakeholder trust and compliance in everything we do, which includes for example the annual trainings that you are part of and the supplier assessments.
Since 2022 we've built a solid foundation. Our sustainability rating has moved from below average to leader, and we've made consistent progress each year.
But what I want to focus on now is moving beyond the hygiene factors (the compliance and investor demands) and into initiatives that are genuinely commercial. That's the intersection we want to operate in: where sustainability and business growth reinforce each other.
A concrete example is our newly launched work on antimicrobial resistance, one of the most pressing challenges at the intersection of animal and human health. We're bringing together experts and data from across the group to produce insights that can genuinely shift how antibiotics are used in veterinary practice, more about that to come.
Link to Sustainability report.
Nextmune Italy has recently invested in a state-of-the-art production line. We asked the team to tell us more about what this means for the business.
Our new production line can manufacture and package virtually all of Nextmune Italy's products with a significantly higher degree of automation. This not only enables a substantially greater production capacity in line with our expansion plans but also ensures business continuity.
The timing was right to make this investment: production volumes have grown significantly in recent years, leading us to rely on external packaging suppliers. With this new production line, we are not only bringing the entire process in-house, gaining full independence from third-party suppliers, but we are also positioning ourselves for future growth, with a clear focus on improving production efficiency. We also anticipate significant growth for and from the other Nextmune country organization, as our products continue to take market share and their reputation continues to build among veterinarians and pet parents.
The line and the entire department are already fully operational. Above all, the investment delivers two major benefits: ensuring continuity of production and meeting the growing market demands. By processing larger production batches, we save time through fewer format changes, while also gaining environmental benefits — larger batches mean fewer line and mixer washes and, consequently, less wastewater to dispose of. Quality also improves, as the automated systems check every single item at every stage of the process.
In terms of flexibility, the key drivers are the two additional mixers and the extra packaging line. By shifting large-scale production runs to the new line, we free up capacity on the existing lines. Combined with our newfound independence from external suppliers — which makes us far more responsive on timing — this is what truly delivers greater flexibility.
This is not the only investment made recently by Nextmune Italy. We have purchased a plot of land adjacent to the site to allow for further development, and we have installed a solar panel system to improve our environmental footprint. These investments are not only aimed at boosting productivity but also demonstrate a particular focus on environmental sustainability.