Medical companies assess damage in Puerto Rico

Medical manufacturers with facilities in Puerto Rico are still assessing damage caused by Hurricane Maria, the strongest hurricane to hit the island in more than 80 years.

Maria made landfall with Category 4 winds of 155 mph on Sept. 20, then dumped 30 inches of rain on parts of the U.S. territory, knocking out power across the island to 3.4 million people, blowing apart homes, flooding streets and triggering mudslides.

Puerto Rico is home to more than 70 medical device manufacturing plants and thousands of the industry's employees. Lured by tax incentives and a skilled workforce, dozens of plastics-related medical brands operate there, including Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Medical Optics, Pfizer, Stryker and Nelipak Healthcare.

Like the resin producers and plastics processors that faced Hurricane Harvey in Texas, many medical equipment makers and pharmaceutical firms closed ahead of Hurricane Maria.

Medtronic Inc., which makes medical devices such as pacemakers, shuttered its facilities and put together an internal emergency response team.

"The safety and well-being of our employees is our top priority and we continue to closely monitor the situation in Puerto Rico," Medtronic spokesman Fernando Vivanco said in a Sept. 22 email to Plastics News. "We continue to assess the impacts of Hurricane Maria on our employees, facilities, customers and the patients we serve, but it is too early to make any determinations right now."

Medtronic has Puerto Rican operations in Humacao, Juncos, San Juan and Villalba, according to its website.

Prent Corp. announced Sept. 19 that it was halting production in Yauco, where it opened a thermoforming operation with clean room services in 2006.

The Janesville, Wis.-based company manufactures custom packaging for the medical, electronics and consumer markets. The Yauco facility currently is the largest thermoforming supplier on the island, according to Prent's latest newsletter.

Hurricane Maria knocked out power to the entire island, and it could be months before it is restored in some places. Technimark LLC was still assessing how its injection molding operation weathered the storm in Ponce, which is Puerto Rico's second-largest city on the southern coast.

"More importantly, we are still trying to get in touch with all of our employees and customers on the island to make sure they are safe," Trent Ingle, director of marketing and communications, said in a Sept. 21 email.

Ashboro, N.C.-based Technimark acquired the Ponce site, which produces medical components and packaging for the health care market, in 2015 when it bought Ci Medical Technologies Inc.

A spokeswoman for Amcor Flexibles America also wasn't immediately sure how the company's staff and buildings fared in the central region.

"We are still assessing the situation in Cidra," Christina Lycke said in an email about the city where 28.7 inches of rain was recorded.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency planned to create an air bridge with three to four planes flying daily to deliver water, food, generators and shelter supplies to the island.

"There's a humanitarian emergency here in Puerto Rico," Gov. Ricardo Rosello said. "This is an event without precedent."

The government hired 56 contractors to clear trees, install new power lines and deploy tanker trucks of water to neighborhoods of the island, which has been declared a federal disaster zone.

Brig. Gen. Dustin Shultz is commanding 4,500 Army reservists brought in to support the Puerto Rican National Guard.

"The reality is that damage will not be known for months in its entirety, until we can really get about and see all the different levels of damage," Shultz said.