Ziemer Brand Guidelines: Frank Ziemer’s Swiss Femtosecond Laser Maker in Port, Bern

A diamond-knife background and a new company in 1998.

Ziemer Ophthalmic Systems AG is based in Port, in the Seeland region of the canton of Bern, Switzerland. The company says it was founded in 1998 by Frank Ziemer, who still leads it as founder, president and chief executive. In an interview with CRST Europe in June 2011, Frank Ziemer said he started the company to develop, make and sell high-technology products for ophthalmology, and that his family had by then been involved in the field for a couple of decades.

He told the magazine he had begun his career at Meyco, the Swiss diamond-knife company, during the era of radial keratotomy, an early incision-based refractive operation, and had risen into its corporate management before leaving. When excimer lasers and then LASIK arrived, he saw demand for microkeratomes, the instruments that cut a thin corneal flap, and decided that a better design could give a newcomer a strong entry into the market.

That product was the Amadeus microkeratome. CRST Europe wrote that Ziemer first attracted attention in ophthalmology when it introduced the Amadeus under the name Surgical Instrument Systems (SIS), and that the device was distributed by Allergan. Frank Ziemer described it as the first microkeratome with a fully automated, electronically controlled handpiece run from a colour touchscreen. After Advanced Medical Optics was split off from Allergan in 2002, AMO took over distribution of the Amadeus.

The company’s own short history follows the same arc in plainer words: it says Ziemer started with a diamond knife, soon developed an automatic blade, and then moved away from the blade altogether to build an eye laser.

From blade to femtosecond laser.

The break with the distributor came when AMO acquired IntraLase and its femtosecond laser technology. Frank Ziemer told CRST Europe in 2011 that AMO then cancelled the Amadeus distribution contract, and that the change forced Ziemer to build its own marketing, sales and distribution channels, which by then reached nearly 50 countries. By that point the company was already working on a femtosecond laser of its own.

The interview listed the products that defined Ziemer in that period: the Pascal tonometer for glaucoma specialists, the GALILEI Dual Scheimpflug Analyzer, the Maxwell aberrometer and the FEMTO LDV femtosecond laser. Christian Rathjen, then vice president of technology and strategy, described the laser as mobile, with a handheld unit that could be used alongside different excimer laser systems. Ziemer also named the Laser Zentrum Hannover in Germany as its exclusive partner for laser physics. Frank Ziemer summed up the approach as a classic strategy of high-tech differentiation and quality, with research, development and manufacturing kept in Switzerland.

In February 2019 the company announced that it had produced its 1,000th FEMTO LDV at its plant in Port, and held a celebration for employees on 31 January that year. It said at the time that it employed about 220 people, 190 of them at its sites in Port and Brügg, that it exported 98 percent of its products, and that it worked with distribution partners in more than 40 countries, with its own distribution and service in Germany and the US and a representative office in Taiwan. The same release says Frank Ziemer was named entrepreneur of the year by Ernst & Young in 2011 in the high-tech and life-science category.

Frank Ziemer linked the company to its setting. In 2011 he told CRST Europe that Ziemer sits in the region traditionally associated with Swiss watchmaking, where suppliers of precision parts, tools and electronics had moved into medical technology, and that apprenticeship-trained mechanics and electronics staff were central to building its devices in Switzerland.

How eye-care device makers present themselves.

Ophthalmic device makers sell to a narrow, expert audience: ophthalmologists, optometrists, opticians and hospital buyers. Their brochures and websites tend to follow a shared visual grammar. The instrument itself is usually the hero, photographed on a plain white or pale grey ground so that every knob, lens and joystick reads clearly, with the maker’s name small on the housing.

A second register places the same equipment in use. Slit lamps, fundus cameras and refraction units appear in clinic rooms, with a practitioner on one side of the chin rest and a patient on the other; surgical microscopes and laser systems are shown in operating theatres, with a surgeon at the console. Screens matter as much as hardware in this category, so many images show scans, maps or software views alongside the machine.

The third register is explanatory. Cross-section diagrams of the eye, showing the cornea, lens and retina, are used to explain what a device measures or treats, and many makers publish training material and webinars for clinicians. Because these are regulated medical products, some product pages note that a model is available only in certain markets.

Much of the category’s public life happens at congresses. Makers launch and demonstrate equipment on exhibition stands at meetings such as the ESCRS congress in Europe and the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, as well as at optical trade fairs, and their news pages often follow that calendar. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it now and where it says its products are made.

A family name and product names in capitals.

Ziemer remains owner-managed. The company describes itself as a family-run business with strong local roots, and its group page lists Frank Ziemer as founder, president and chief executive and Kurt Ziemer as vice chairman of the board. Its website lists Ziemer locations in Switzerland, the US and Canada, Germany and Shanghai.

The current range is presented in capitals, which gives the brand a consistent technical voice: the site lists the FEMTO Z8 NEO, the FEMTO LDV Z8, Z6 and Z4, the GALILEI G4 and G6 diagnostic devices and the AQUARIUZ system, with FlowSuite planning software. In September 2026 Ziemer announced that its UNIQA phakic lens, an implantable lens for refractive surgery that it calls “100% Swiss-made,” had received CE marking, and it presented new products at the ESCRS congress that month. The company’s news pages also report its own user meetings, training sessions and satellite symposia at ESCRS.

For a design guide, Ziemer shows how a founder’s name, a Swiss place and a run of capitalised product names can make a small company read as a precise instrument maker. Compare Haag-Streit, another Swiss maker of ophthalmic instruments, and SCHWIND, a maker of refractive lasers. For this guide we use a graphite, a blue, a pale white and a copper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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