Nypro Inc. has put on hold two announced expansions for the finished-product assembly and packaging business of its medical sector.
Temporarily shelved are a 90,000-square-foot expansion of its plant in Mebane, N.C., and the creation of a development and design center for that business at the firm's Clinton, Mass., headquarters. But Nypro has added to the drawing board a plan for a small clean room in Clinton to support the medical sector.
“The plans [for the expansion in Mebane] have been sketched out, but the money has not yet been allocated for that,” said Jason Durkin, global director at Nypro Healthcare for finished-product assembly and packaging. “Likewise, the plans for a development and design center in Clinton are in place, but are not being executed at this time. Both projects will be driven by need,” Durkin said at the Medical Design & Manufacturing West show, held Feb.14-16 in Anaheim.
The Mebane expansion, announced in August, had been scheduled for completion this June; the design center in Clinton was supposed to open this month.
However, a 75,000-square-foot expansion at Nypro's Asheville, N.C., plant, which makes injectable insulin pens, has been completed, he said.
His group also submitted a capital expenditure request to build a 20,000-square-foot facility in Clinton to support medical assembly and packaging. That expansion proposal is still under consideration, but the clinical part of it could be completed by midyear, with production running by the first quarter of next year, he said. It includes a 10,000-square-foot Class 8 clean room, and 5,000 square feet each for inventory and office space, he said.
“The space is needed to support business we have already won,” Durkin said. “We have had many successful wins in that space in the past 18 months.” The clean room would have a cold chain management area for customers whose drugs require refrigeration, he added.
He said people in Clinton are working on the development and design center but the larger part of that effort is now concentrated in Ireland, where Nypro also has a plant that could expand.
Overall, Durkin said the company's medical business is growing. “We are seeing decent revenue growth,” he said. “We are on par or slightly ahead of the market.”
Medical accounts for roughly one-third of Nypro's annual sales, which he said are “hovering around $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion.”
“We want to grow the medical sector to be larger. It takes more time for projects to deliver revenue, but the business is more stable and you end up with five to 10 years of production from a project,” Durkin said.
