Sotera Health (SHC) FY2025 results: revenue $1.2 billion, up 5.7% on the year

Sotera Health provides sterilization services, microbiological and analytical lab testing and advisory services so that medical, pharmaceutical and food products are safe for healthcare practitioners, patients and consumers. It serves customers in over 50 countries from 62 facilities, and the filing states that in 2025 its customers included over 40 of the top 50 medical device companies and nine of the top ten global pharmaceutical companies. Most of its services are needed for customers to meet government requirements. It runs three businesses, Sterigenics, Nordion and Nelson Labs.

Sterigenics

Sterigenics sterilizes products in their final packaging, the last step before healthcare products ship, and it has provided sterilization services for over 90 years. The products it sterilizes include procedure kits and trays, implants, syringes, catheters, wound care products, personal protective equipment, laboratory products and pharmaceuticals. It offers gamma irradiation at 23 facilities, the process it calls EO processing at 17 and electron beam irradiation at eight, out of 48 facilities in 13 countries. Final qualification was underway at the time of the filing for a new X-ray facility next to an existing gamma facility, and it is also investing in NO2-based sterilization. It also reduces microbes in food and agricultural products and treats materials such as power semiconductors, polymers and gemstones, and it serves more than 2,000 customers. It buys its Co-60 sources, the key input into gamma sterilization, from Nordion, and in the United States a single supplier provides EO to the industry. The filing names Applied Sterilization Technologies, a segment of STERIS plc, as its global competitor, along with smaller regional sterilizers and manufacturers that sterilize in-house.

Nordion

Nordion supplies Co-60, the filing's name for a radioactive isotope of cobalt whose gamma radiation kills micro-organisms, for sterilization and irradiation and for cancer treatment, and it also designs, installs and maintains the gamma irradiation systems that house the sources. The company estimates that gamma sterilization accounts for approximately 30% of single-use medical device sterilization worldwide. Co-60 is made by placing cobalt-59 in a nuclear power reactor, a conversion that takes between 18 months and five years, and it decays at a rate of approximately 12% a year. Nordion has multi-year contracts with three operators covering 13 reactors at five generating stations, running to dates between 2026 and 2064, and most of its material has historically come from reactors in Canada and Russia, with some from Argentina, China and India. Of the over 200 large scale irradiation systems active globally, over 120 were built by Nordion. It also sells high specific activity Co-60 used in stereotactic radiosurgery devices such as the Gamma Knife, and it processes cobalt at a facility in Kanata, Canada, with a European distribution facility in Milton, United Kingdom. Since buying Nordion in 2014 the company has kept information barriers between Nordion and Sterigenics on certain customer information, because Sterigenics competes with other Nordion customers.

Nelson Labs

Nelson Labs provides outsourced microbiological and analytical chemistry testing for the medical device and pharmaceutical industries, with over 900 tests, along with technical, regulatory and advisory services across a product's life. It serves approximately 3,000 customers and operates from a five-building campus in Salt Lake City, Utah, with 85 laboratories, plus facilities in Itasca, Illinois, Leuven, Belgium, Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin and Wiesbaden, Germany and seven laboratories inside Sterigenics facilities. It competes with national and international testing providers and smaller regional or niche laboratories.

People

As of December 31, 2025 it employed over 3,000 people worldwide.

From Sotera Health's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 24 February 2026: read the full 10-K.