Our Story

The story of PPL Biomechanics is one that began, and evolves, in response to the needs of patients and healthcare professionals. In the very early days, it was an off-shoot of James and Joanne McKenna’s Cork Podiatry Clinic. Joanne started making custom made orthotic devices for their clinic patients in a shed in her mother-in-law’s garden. Three years later, in 1996, we realised that we could help many more patients to keep moving if we offered our orthotic making services throughout Ireland.

Demand for training in biomechanical assessments and prescriptions led us to develop our education program in the late 1990s. Since then we have continued to add to our training and education program in response to healthcare developments  – adding topics related to diabetes, footwear, splints and offloading. During the Covid pandemic, we responded by providing our training virtually.

Our product range has expanded, along with our workforce. We have a multidisciplinary team with qualifications in biomechanics, podiatry and physiotherapy.

While many things have changed in our 25 plus years, a few things have not. We’re just as committed today to keep patients moving as we were when we ran our own podiatry clinic. But nowadays we research and manufacture the best preventative and therapeutic products so we can do so at scale.

And although we keep moving to keep people moving, PPL hasn’t moved very far. We still make everything in Cork, but we’ve upgraded from the shed to premises with a much bigger footprint!