“Oxygen is the most important medicine in a hospital,” emphasizes Jean-Édouard de Cumont. The thirty-year-old is the head of Gaz Systèmes, a company located north of Pau which manufactures means of producing oxygen, air and medical vacuum. Where many hospitals have oxygen delivered by truck, Gaz Systèmes offers to install generators permanently. They allow the hospital to be completely autonomous.
“We work 100% on exports,” explains the CEO, who founded the company with his wife Juliette de Cumont. Since 2019, we have sold 300 generators. It’s a technology that generally has a fairly long sales cycle, from initial discussions to sale. »
At the beginning of November, the president of Gaz Systèmes was present at the state dinner organized at the Élysée for Kassym-Jomart Tokaïev, the president of the Republic of Kazakhstan. “We had already been part of the French delegation which visited this country and Uzbekistan in November 2023,” recalls Jean-Édouard de Cumont. Paradoxically, this also allows us to make ourselves known to the French. »
100% international
Gaz Systèmes is already well established in Kazakhstan. The Central Asian country boosted its development in October 2020, just one year after the creation of the company, by ordering 100 generators for 11 million euros. The Covid-19 health crisis had hit the world, and the need for oxygen was colossal. “An order worth 11 million euros is no longer possible today,” estimates the thirty-year-old. Since then, turnover has declined, going from 8 to 5 million euros. But the company, which hires around ten employees, hopes to reach 10 million euros within two years.
For this, Gaz Systèmes has opened the doors to the European hospital market by obtaining the “CE” marking. “We have just returned from a show in Germany,” explains Jean-Édouard de Cumont. There is demand in Europe. » In addition to Central Asia, Gaz Systèmes is already present in Asia and West Africa. The business leader adds that several international organizations, like Unitaid (international medicine purchasing organization) or Unicef (United Nations children’s fund), allocate several billion euros to the development of projects for access to medical oxygen.
Faced with demand, the Gaz Systèmes premises in Serres-Castet – which total 1,300 m² – are sometimes a little narrow. “It becomes complicated when we have a large order,” recognizes Jean-Édouard de Cumont. A project to install a new site is in the pipeline. It could see the light of day in 2026, on a plot of 6,500 m² in the Bruscas area, in Sauvagnon, still north of Pau. In this perspective, the Community of Communes of Luys en Béarn (CCLB) has proposed to carry out the real estate investment within the framework of a real estate leasing operation for which the community will assume the role of lessor and property manager. ‘work.
