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GF Health Products Inc. is no stranger to export awards.
GF, short for Graham-Field, a purveyor of hospital beds, exam tables and some 50,000 catalog items in business since 1946, has taken home just about every honor in the book when it comes to international sales expansion.
The Gwinnett-based firm has won multiple GLOBE Awards, formerly doled out by Georgia governors to recognize companies that had found at least one new market abroad in the preceding year.
In 2018, CEO Ken Spett was among the exporters pitching for an additional $20,000 in funding for the Atlanta Metro Export Challenge, through which the company had already won a $5,000 grant and $2,500 in UPS shipping credits. GF didn’t win the additional grant, but it did outline how bringing some manufacturing back from overseas helped drive a $10 million expansion at its headquarters and warehouse just behind an Amazon fulfillment center near the DeKalb County line.
On May 4, the company was honored again for using global sales to drive American manufacturing growth, as the Export-Import Bank of the United States named GF one of just 10 Exporters of the Year from across the country.
“These companies represent the very best of American exporting — innovative, resilient, and competitive in markets across the world,” said Exim President and Chairman John Jovanovic in a news release.
In his own press statement, Mr. Spett highlighted Exim’s “critical role” in underpinning global sales from its three U.S. factories.
“Their risk mitigation solutions enable us to enter new markets with confidence, support our foreign customers, and accelerate global growth,” Mr. Spett said.
EXIM offers export credit insurance, which insures U.S. firms’ receivables against nonpayment of foreign buyers, as well as loan guarantees and in some cases, direct financing to buyers of American goods and services.
The honor is not the first bestowed by Exim on a Georgia company. In 2022, aircraft spare parts exporter Aventure Aviation recieved the same recognition as GF, and way back in 2011, solar ce;ll manufacturer Suniva won the “Renewable Energy Exporter of the Year” at the front end of winding journey that included a bankruptcy, a Chinese acquisition, and the restart of production in 2024.
GF Health is marking its 80th anniversary this year and as recently as March touted its U.S. manufacturing base, 300 people strong, as a “tariff solution,” noting in a memo that domestic “manufacturing is not a reaction to current events, but a core strategy.”
- Learn more at https://grahamfield.com.
