Medical-device contract manufacturer MedTech Group Inc. has renamed itself Vention Medical and hired Dan Croteau as CEO, replacing founder George Blank, who will remain with the company as chairman.
Croteau comes to Vention from Flextronics International Ltd., where he was president of FlexMedical, the company's global medical products contract design and manufacturing division.
“Our previous name reflected our legacy, but not our future,” said Blank, who had told Plastics News in July about an impending name change for the privately owned South Plainfield, N.J., company.
“The new name embodies the vision of the organization: to partner with companies as the engine of innovation for the components and devices that help them realize their goals and visions.”
Vention, like its predecessor company MedTech Holdings Inc., will have three business units. They are MedTech Group and two companies MedTech acquired in the past two years: medical heat-shrink tubing and angioplasty balloon designer Advanced Polymers Inc.; and TDC Medical Inc., a 6-year-old firm known for its design and development capabilities in single-use, hand-held instruments used in therapeutic and surgical markets.
MedTech has manufactured precision injection molded parts for the medical-device industry since 1979. Salem, N.H.-based Advanced Polymers, acquired in July, makes heat-shrink tubing and catheter balloons for minimally invasive surgical procedures, with particular experience in thin-wall, ultrahigh-strength heat-shrink. Advanced also manufactures extruded tubing for catheters and components and subassemblies for the catheter industry, and has built its reputation as a design company.
TDC Medical, acquired in December 2008, provides design, development, quality systems and pilot manufacturing services. It is based in Marlborough, Mass.
“Though our name and look are changing to reflect our evolved business, our core values and focus on our customers remain the same,” Croteau said in a Vention news release.
Vention has five clean rooms at its manufacturing plants in South Plainfield, N.J.; West Haven, Conn.; Vega Baja, Puerto Rico; and Heredia, Costa Rica.
It also has a supply chain office in Singapore. TDC has design facilities in Boulder, Colo.; Sunnyvale, Calif.; and Marlborough.
The name change completes a busy two years for Vention and its precursor, MedTech.
Earlier in 2010 the firm opened its second plant in Heridia, Costa Rica, adjacent to its first. The new plant has space for two clean rooms and assembly operations, and includes a tool-building operation larger in size than the firm's 5,000-square-foot toolroom in New Jersey.
The first Costa Rica plant, which was launched in 2004, does injection molding and assembly and operates one clean room. Together the Costa Rican plants give the company more than 60,000 square feet of manufacturing space in Heredia.
In September 2009 — nine months after it acquired TDC — Vention increased the size of the clean room of TDC's facility in Marlborough to 20,000 square feet from 13,000 square feet, and replaced TDC's Sunnyvale design facility with a new 25,000-square-foot building with a larger clean room.
Vention also added engineering staff at both locations.