Meet the boss of a Yorkshire firm which aims to revolutionise dentistry

The bustling Yorkshire town of Silsden has an unlikely claim to fame.

It’s a hotbed of dentistry, according to Dr Paul Harrison, the managing director and co-founder of EthOss Regeneration, a company which has dreams of entering the Chinese and US markets as growing numbers of global consumers aim to look after their teeth in an ethical way.

This centre of expertise came about through accident rather than design.

“We set up our base in Silsden 12 years ago, because new premises had become available,’’ said Mr Harrison. “There are three dental companies within 400 metres of each other. All this seems to have come about purely by chance.

"We meet the other dental firms (DB Orthodontic, Top Dental, and Swallow Dental Supplies) regularly and see them at international events.

“ We can just chat and see how things are going. We are in different segments of the market so we are not competitors.”

EthOss Regeneration is quietly creating waves on the global stage. According to Mr Harrison, the company has been forged around a simple concept: “The body wants to heal, let’s work with it”.

This was the key factor in the development of EthOss, a grafting material which works with the body to regenerate lost bone. From the start, EthOss was developed with the needs of dentists in mind. Mr Harrison has taken an unconventional route into this specialist field.

Following a short career at the University of Leeds, Mr Harrison started an advanced materials consultancy firm.

One successful project involved developing a method of stretching bone using external fixators to strengthen the union after a fracture.

This triggered Mr Harrison’s fascination with bone growth. In 2013, he co-founded EthOss Regeneration Ltd with his friend and colleague, the experienced dental implantologist, Dr Peter Fairbairn.

“We are the first company in the world doing this form of bone regeneration,’’ said Mr Harrison. “Ever since the late 1980s I have been interested in bone regeneration and this helped me to move into the dental field.

“I have always been interested in synthetic materials because they are ethically more sound. In the late 1990s, I read an academic paper which inspired me to do some further research into the potential uses of synthetic materials in dentistry.”

“By 2013, we thought we had got this right,’’ he said. “We produce bio-materials which we sell to dental surgeons worldwide.”

The rapid growth of social media has also boosted the company’s profile and customer base.

He added: “Our Facebook page for clinicians attracted a massive following worldwide. It gives them a chance to talk to each other online. It is peer-to-peer selling. We also offer free educational programmes about how to use our products.”

What sets EthOss apart from the competition, is its focus on doing business the ethical way, according to Mr Harrison.

“Ethics goes through everything we do,” said Mr Harrison. “It goes through the way we deal with distributors and we also carry out a lot of social responsibility work around charities.

“Exports already account for 60 per cent of our sales. With our products, you end up with your own bone as we restore the jaw line. Using EthOss, patients receiving implants often have their final crown fitted within three months, compared to the four to six months it would usually take with traditional materials.

“We supply to around 25 to 30 per cent of the UK dental surgeons in the UK, but the UK market is a very small percentage of the market in global terms.”

The company, which employs four staff, expects to achieve a turnover of £3m this year, a figure which is likely to increase as it enters new markets.

“We estimate around 1,500 dental surgeons in the UK use our products,” said Mr Harrison.

“Breaking into export markets can be relatively easy. Using Government bodies has been a great help to us as well and helped us to connect with commercial distributors.”

Even the pandemic failed to halt the firm’s growth.

Mr Harrison said: “We lost four months of trading at the start of the financial year, but we still grew.

“We kept all of our staff out of furlough and used the time to build up the educational side of the business and marketing through the website. June and August were record months for exports. We recorded 49 per cent growth over the first half of this year.

“We already export to 50 countries and 11 other are going through approval. There is a strong talent base in Yorkshire,” said Mr Harrison.

“It’s a very good place to have a medical-based business. We are certainly not planning to move from Yorkshire.

“Within the next five years we might employ 10 to 15 staff and might need more space. I hope we are exporting to 75 to 80 countries, particularly China, which has got its own regulatory procedures.”

Mr Harrison added: “It can take four to five years to gain approval in China and we are two years into that process.

"The opportunities in China are enormous. It would also be great to break into the US market, where we have gained a lot of interest from US dentists via social media.”

It seems leaders from the world of dentistry will be beating a path to Silsden for years to come.