Fisher & Paykel Healthcare
Respiratory humidification systems
- Industry
- Medical devices
- Country
- New Zealand
- Founded
- 1969
- Revenue
- ~$1.4B (FY2026)
The world leader in heated humidification for respiratory care — the systems that warm and moisten the air ventilated patients breathe. Sold in about 120 countries, its devices sit beside hospital beds worldwide while the Auckland company itself stays quietly unknown.
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare started in 1969 with a deceptively simple idea: air pushed into a patient’s lungs by a machine should be as warm and humid as air the body prepares for itself. That insight — emulating the body’s natural humidification — became a product category, and the Auckland company became its global leader.
Spun off from the Fisher & Paykel appliance group in 2001, the healthcare business now sells respiratory humidifiers, breathing circuits, nasal high-flow therapy, and sleep apnea masks in around 120 countries. Operating revenue passed NZ$2.3 billion (roughly US$1.4 billion) in fiscal 2026, still under the hidden-champion ceiling.
It is the southern hemisphere’s proof of the pattern: a company from a country of five million people can own a global medical niche by going deeper into one clinical problem — for over fifty years — than any diversified giant will.