Welland Medical Brand Guidelines: Crawley Stoma Bags From a 1988 Kitchen Table

Hand-made stoma bags and a first export market.

Welland Medical dates its start to 1988. The company says its journey began at a small kitchen table, with a handful of people making stoma bags by hand. The UK register at Companies House shows the limited company behind it was incorporated in September 1987 under another name, Hevlex Limited, and took the Welland Medical name that December; its registered business is the manufacture of medical and dental instruments and supplies.

The company’s published timeline sets out its first decade. Its first closed and drainable bags came in 1989. In 1994 the Netherlands became its first export distributor, followed by Sweden. In 1996 it launched IMPACT, which it describes as the first and only flushable bag, and the timeline says the product received two SMART awards for its innovation and marketing. In 1997 came the first two-piece bags, sold as Liberty II, and the first urostomy bags, and IMPACT won a Sussex Business Award, the company says.

The same timeline says IMPACT was awarded Millennium Product status by the UK Design Council in 1999.

Flair, Aurum and Manuka honey.

After IMPACT the company built its bags into named ranges, by its own account. Curvex bags followed in 2001, and the Flair closed and drainable range in 2003, alongside HydroFrame flange extenders. A flushable successor, Flair Xtra, came in 2004, with WBF barrier wipes and spray. Flair Convex followed in 2005, Flair2 in 2008, and Flair Active in 2009, later extended to urostomy, post-operative and convex versions.

In 2013, the year it marked 25 years, Welland launched the Aurum one-piece range, which it says is made with Manuka honey, along with accessories such as a barrier spray, stoma paste and stoma powder, and a multi-purpose range that included paediatric and wound care bags. HydroFrame and HyperSeal mouldable seals with Manuka honey followed in 2014, and Aurum Xtra, a flushable version, and Aurum2 in 2015. Aurum Convex and Aurum Profile bags arrived in 2017.

The timeline also records smaller additions between the bag launches: a medical adhesive remover in 2007, a night drainage bag and a product called Easiflo in 2015, and the UltraFrame flange extender in 2016, when HyperSeal seals gained three new sizes. Alongside the products it lists workplace milestones, from Investors in People Silver status in 2010 to Gold in 2012, Champion status in 2013 and reaccreditation at Gold in 2015.

The current lead range is Aurum Plus, launched in 2021 with a new shaped flange and, the company says, two new bag colours, black and sand; a soft convex version followed in 2023. The range comes in closed, drainable and urostomy versions. In 2024, the company says, all of its Manuka honey products were accredited by the Skin Health Alliance, and in 2025 it rebranded its stoma care accessories.

Welland describes its bags as made for all lifestyles, and its website carries stories from people living with a stoma, including climbers and marathon runners. The site also profiles its engineering team: its engineering director, who joined in 2020, describes work on a technology strategy for its production equipment.

How the category presents itself.

Wound-care, ostomy and continence companies sell mostly to nurses, surgeons and pharmacists, and their visual language tends to reflect that audience. Brochures and websites in the category often favour soft-focus close-ups of skin and dressings, clean white backgrounds and pale, calm colours, with the product shown in use rather than as an object. Nurses appear again and again: at hospital bedsides, in clinics and in community care, changing a dressing or talking with a patient at home.

Ostomy and continence brands face a different task. Their users live with the products every day, so the imagery usually moves out of the clinic and into ordinary life: discreet lifestyle photography of people with a stoma swimming, hiking, travelling or at work, with the pouch rarely in view. Packaging across the category tends towards pastel tones, plain product names and clear labelling that has to read on a ward shelf and in a home bathroom alike.

The trade also has its own calendar. Companies meet clinicians at congresses such as the conference of the European Wound Management Association (EWMA) in Europe, the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care (SAWC) in the United States and the annual meeting of the Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nurses Society (WOCN), where stands, posters and education sessions carry much of a brand’s presence. Swedish Wikipedia records that Mölnlycke prepared a position document on its Safetac technology together with EWMA.

The companies in this guide range from a Swedish textile mill of 1849 and a Dijon family group to British ostomy specialists and American medical-technology firms. Each guide sets out what can be checked — who founded the company, who owns it and where it says its products are made — and separates documented facts from the company’s own claims.

Part of the CliniMed group since 1997.

Welland is not independent. Its timeline says it joined the CliniMed group of companies in 1997, and the Companies House register lists CliniMed (Holdings) Limited as the person with significant control of Welland Medical Limited, holding 75 per cent or more of the shares. Welland describes CliniMed as a privately owned group established in 1982, made up of eight companies serving healthcare markets, among them CliniMed itself, SecuriCare, Helapet and Hydrokem; it says the group employs more than 900 people. Companies House lists that holding company as a private limited company registered in England and Wales, and Welland Medical Limited as active.

Welland’s operating base is at Crawley in West Sussex, near Gatwick Airport, according to its contact page. The company says it has grown from that kitchen table into a business of about 290 colleagues supplying people with a stoma on every continent, and it presents its purpose as “enhancing people’s lives, every day,” with values it lists as excellence, innovation, integrity, quality and wellbeing.

Its website is organised for two audiences: people living with a stoma, who can read explanations of closed, drainable and urostomy bags and request samples, and healthcare professionals, who get product guidance and resources. Its news pages cover product launches, the Skin Health Alliance accreditation and staff stories, such as International Women in Engineering Day. Its homepage leads with the Aurum Plus range, now offered in flat and soft convex bags in closed, drainable and urostomy versions, and with an accessories range it describes as made to be adaptable for all lifestyles.

For a design guide, Welland Medical shows how a maker inside a larger group can build recognition through named product ranges and a single ingredient story. Compare Salts Healthcare, another British stoma care maker, and Convatec, another ostomy company. For this guide we use a deep plum, a cream and a honey amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Welland Medical’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.