Medical contract manufacturer and injection molder Pacific Plastics & Engineering has added an eighth clean room to its 21,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Soquel, Calif., six miles south of Santa Cruz.
The Class 7 clean room will be used to assemble medical devices for sinuplasty procedures, vein harvesting and other minimally invasive surgical procedures, said CEO Stephanie Harkness in a phone interview Sept. 2.
The clean room, completed two weeks ago, will be used exclusively for assembly, Harkness said. “We incubate startups and work with early stage companies that are in the stealth mode, using new technologies.”
The company's other Class 7 clean room, built in 2005, does medical molding using six Toshiba all-electric molding machines with clamping forces of 85-110 tons.
Its other six clean rooms are Class 8 rooms and have 14 hydraulic molding machines of 28-130 tons, Harkness said.
“We are growing at 18 percent this year after a bit of a dip to 7 percent growth in 2009 because venture capitalists that fund new companies hit the pause button last year,” said Harkness. “But hopefully they have renewed optimism for funding new products,” given the need to reduce health-care costs because of federal health-care reform, she said.
The privately owned, 21-year-old company also works with larger health-care companies such as Boston Scientific Corp. — after they purchase a startup. It operates 24/7 with 92 employees, including its own engineering staff.
“These startups want a local partner because they are moving at warp speed and don't want to invest in that infrastructure,” Harkness said.
“Our customers own the intellectual property. We produce to their specifications.”
She said Pacific Plastics makes products for the cardiovascular, orthopedic, gastrointestinal and neuromuscular segments, and also makes products used in pain management, diabetic care, women's health, sinus care, wound care, drug delivery, and diagnostics.