Contact lens market ripe for expansion

Dense fog blocked out what should have been the ‘ultimate’ view at the top of the City of London’s Leadenhall Building in the first of CooperVision’s Ready for Today roadshows, which then headed to Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Copenhagen. But Professor Nathan Efron retained a clear view of what in the optical market he’d buy shares in.

Having jetted in from his native Australia, Prof Efron was prudent enough to stop short of saying silicone hydrogel daily disposables were the ultimate in contact lenses.

‘It’s very dangerous as an academic to be standing on stage saying something is the ultimate,’ he told practitioners invited along to the CooperVision event. He backed this up by referring to a book by contact lens pioneer Norman Bier in 1957 that prematurely stated, following the discovery of rigid lenses, that the days of basic discoveries had passed.