MedPlast Inc. has expanded its mold manufacturing facility in West Berlin, N.J., and is rebuilding its Tempe, Ariz., headquarters facility to add clean rooms and white rooms.
The $90 million medical manufacturer runs five plants, with 375,000 square feet combined, and more than 200 rubber and plastics molding machines. It employs 800 and is led by longtime industry veteran Harold Faig.
“We have just completed a significant investment,” said John Madden, sales director for the eastern region, in an interview at Medical Design & Manufacturing West, held Feb. 10-12 in Anaheim.
“We have added a new suite for two-shot molding” in West Berlin, Madden said. Also at that plant, MedPlast invested $1.5 million in a tool shop that includes high-speed computer numerically controlled machining centers and electric discharge machines, with robotic tool-changing capabilities.
“We underwent a total facelift at the shop, adding four new pieces of high-speed equipment,” he said. “The machines were installed on the floor a month ago.”
The investment will allow MedPlast to shorten lead times on tooling, increase throughput and hold tighter tolerances. “That is critical in the current marketplace,” Madden said.
Robert Piccoli, vice president and West Berlin's general manager, said the plant was upgraded and redesigned, to optimize work flow and planning. “The new machines allow us to more effectively compete,” he said.
The expansion at MedPlast Tempe, already under way, will add a 20,000-square-foot clean room and a 20,000-square-foot white room, Madden said. The project is expected to be finished by March 31, he said.
“Tempe is being rebuilt from the ground up to do more medical work,” he said. The site makes products for medical, pharmaceutical and packaging industries.
The Tempe plant also will add staff to its engineering and corporate quality groups, Madden said.
“We are focused on filling our capacity in the U.S.,” he said. “Our goal is 20 percent year after year growth. In the past, the company was tribal. Now there is more of a feeling of a single company with everyone working together. Our current management is all industry veterans with a very clear vision of where they want to take the company.”
MedPlast was formed in April when buyout-fund specialist Baird Capital Partners of Milwaukee bought the rubber and plastics group of Applied Tech Products Corp. and family-owned K&W Medical Specialties of Westfield, Pa.
About 70 percent of MedPlast's business is in medical, focusing largely on surgical instruments and diagnostic devices geared to its capabilities in rubber, plastics, and silicone — as well as overmolding and two-shot molding.
The former ATP plants, which include West Berlin and Tempe, make trocars, staplers, autosutures and other hand-held single-use surgical products where thermoplastic elastomers are molded over polycarbonate and medical-grade ABS. Those plants also make medicinal applicators and hand-held diagnostic equipment for the women's health market.
The former K&W plants make medical and pharmaceutical devices for the hospital and surgical markets, as well as devices for blood collection, medicine delivery and disease detection.