Visions in Oil and a Picture-Postcard Summer Party: Team Week and the Inauguration of Polymedics Innovations GmbH’s New Kirchheim HQ

A week full of highlights lies behind us. July 10 to 14 was Team Week at our new Kirchheim/Teck HQ. Our sales team, the marketeers and our medical specialists all accepted the invitation and came to Kirchheim from much of Europe and the United States. We discussed our aims and opportunities, bundled our capacities and above all experienced so much together as a team. The crowning finale was the festive inauguration of the new PMI HQ on July 14, 2023.

Successful Collaboration

The Thursday was especially challenging for us as a team. Led by external trainers, we had to capture our office vibes. What worked well and where was there scope for improvement? Where can everybody work on themselves? Our Managing Partner Christian Planck answered the employees’ 20 most important questions and shared the strategy and planning for the next ten years. In the afternoon our task was to contemplate the Vision 2030 in the form of a picture. Around 60 PMI colleagues met in interdisciplinary working groups, created pictorial images of their ideas and presented them to the plenary at the vernissage. The final act of the day was highly symbolic: the hoisting of PMI flags outside the new building and its joint handover to our senior partner Heinrich Planck and his son Christian Planck.

A Look Over Shoulders

On Friday morning most of us spent our time getting down to work on the production of Suprathel and Supra SDRM. Suprathel is a synthetic membrane-based skin replacement that is used on second-degree and extensive burns. Supra SDRM achieves successes in the treatment of chronic wounds that can heal even after years. All PMI products are developed, manufactured and packed in Kirchheim and then shipped worldwide.

“Work by Day. Guests in the Evening.”

In keeping with Goethe’s words, the conclusion of our intensive Team Week was the summer party at which the new HQ building was ceremonially inaugurated. Along with our PMI team business partners, representatives of local, regional and national government and friends and companions celebrated the occasion. Prof. Dr. Heinrich Planck, senior partner and founder of Polymedics, mentioned benchmark data of the construction project now completed. Architect Antonio Camuti of Klein – Sommer – Camuti – Hubschneider dealt with the project’s special challenges, especially the clean rooms and the desire to be able to extend the premises.

His son and fellow-CEO Christian Planck gave an indication in his speech of how much corporate growth lay behind the relocation to the new HQ site. Over the past three years the company, he said, had grown by nearly 300 percent, dipping briefly into the financials. A figure at least as impressive was the around 180,000 patients treated with PMI products in recent years.

Political Congratulations

Johannes Bauernfeind of the health insurer AOK Baden-Württemberg was the first keynote speaker. He emphasized PMI’s positive contributions to the healthcare system: the high-quality wound care that Polymedics Innovations products made possible and the societal benefit of providing jobs that were subject to social security contributions. The next speaker was Pascal Bader, lord mayor of Kirchheim/Teck. “We are delighted and proud that you are here,” he said. It was, after all, about implementing ideas and innovations. Markus Grübel, a Christian Democratic member of the German Bundestag, thanked the company and its owners “for having invested in Germany.” He expressed appreciation of the family image and the values for which the Planck family stood and the unabated “entrepreneurial spirit” of senior partner Heinrich Planck. Nils Schmid of the Social Democrats echoed these words of praise and especially underscored the entrepreneurial risk of growing the company. CDU state assemblywoman Dr. Natalie Pfau-Weller talked about the product’s symbolic power and the passion that lay behind a product that protected many people from pain. The final speaker, Karin Maag, an independent member of the Federal Joint Committee, a public health body, outlined the course of a medical device to approval. “The faster we can make available a new medication or new medical product to the patient, the better,” she said.”

The guests—as wished by the hosts and speakers—went on to enjoy the food, the musical entertainment and discussions on a balmy summer evening.