Named for the Alpstein massif in Appenzell

The Alpstein is limestone, which means it began as sediment on the floor of a shallow sea. Layer settled on layer, and then the Alps folded and lifted the whole sequence into the air. What you see from the village of Appenzell is that structure stood on end: bands of rock you can count, carrying a ridge that runs up to Säntis at 2,502 metres.

Three cantons meet across it, Appenzell Innerrhoden, Appenzell Ausserrhoden and St. Gallen, and every ridge on it has been surveyed, named and mapped. Rain that falls on the massif filters down through the limestone and comes out clean at the bottom.

Both of those facts are why the name fits. Collagen is also a structure assembled in layers, and it works or fails on whether that structure survives handling. And a material, like a mountain, is only properly understood once somebody has measured it.

Andrew Williamson has spent his working life in medical devices, including as President of Heraeus Medical, the German orthopaedic biomaterials business. That is the part of medicine he finds interesting, because the result is visible: a bone that knits, a joint that holds, someone who walks again without a second operation.

Running a business at that end of the industry teaches you where products actually fail. Rarely in the idea. Usually in the material: a lot that behaves differently, a supplier who cannot explain why, a submission held up while somebody writes a justification for a change nobody chose.

The ethos he carried out of Heraeus is that the material is not a commodity sitting underneath the product. It is part of the product. Alpstein starts from that position: make the collagen properly, in one line, in one place, measure it honestly and hand over the measurements. Then the people designing devices can spend their time on the device.

Alpstein Biotech AG is the Swiss entity that stands as manufacturer on the documentation. Australian herds at one end, release from Switzerland at the other. Raw material supply comes first: soluble and insoluble atelocollagen for research, medical device and drug delivery customers. Products built on that collagen follow.

Testing sits deliberately outside the company. Intertek measures identity and purity. The University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge test structure and mechanical properties. None of them has a stake in the result.