Medical-device contract manufacturer SMC Ltd. has acquired Innovend LLC, a maker of high-end disposable medical products in Leominster, Mass.
It is SMC's second acquisition in the past 10 months of an East Coast medical company, and its third acquisition in the past 16 months.
Innovend operates two plants in Leominster totaling 70,000 square feet, including a Class 7 clean room. The plants have 32 injection molding machines from 22-500 tons, and roughly 80 employees, said Barbara Tischart, sales and marketing director for Somerset, Wis.-based SMC.
``Innovend does higher-volume component manufacturing and assembly,'' Tischart said in a Jan. 29 interview at the Medical Design & Manufacturing West trade show in Anaheim. ``It adds to our portfolio of services and gives us some additional presence [on the East Coast where] we have a very strong customer base. It is strategically important for us to be near that customer base.''
She said the existing Innovend management team, including former President Roger Fluet, will remain with the company.
In March, SMC acquired Cycles Inc. of Sterling, Mass., adding 114,000 square feet from two plants in Sterling.
``An East Coast manufacturing base has always been of strong importance to us,'' said SMC President and co-founder Chaten Patel in a statement. ``The addition of Innovend adds high-volume manufacturing of disposable plastics ... in close proximity to many of our key customers.''
Nearly 90 percent of SMC's business is contract manufacturing and molding for the medical-device and pharmaceutical industries; the remainder is electronics.
SMC now has more 500,000 square feet of manufacturing space in 11 facilities. Besides the acquired plants, it has two in Somerset, Wis., one in Amery, Wis., and three in a rural area of Bangalore, India - picked up when SMC bought longtime supplier Laxmi Electronics in 2006. The Indian factories have more than 100,000 square feet.
SMC also has a design facility in Hudson, Ohio.
Tischart said SMC, founded 20 years ago, has been growing more than 20 percent annually for several years, much of it organic growth. The firm expects to maintain, if not exceed, that growth going forward, she said.
SMC does injection molding, including two-shot, gas-assist, insert, and liquid silicone molding. It also offers finished device assembly and supply chain management.