ProMed to break ground on Costa Rica facility before end of 2024

Central America, especially Costa Rica, has become an increasingly popular destination for medical technology manufacturing companies across the globe. In 2024 alone, both Trelleborg Healthcare and Medical and Freudenberg Medical broke ground on facilities on the territory.

Minnesota-based ProMed Molded Products is the next company to get in on the action.

Construction is set to begin at the new ProMed Molded Products in San Jose before the end of the year, according to President Clint Schneider. The building is projected to open for business by early 2026. The company did not disclose how much it is investing in the new factory.

"This facility will enable ProMed to provide both cost-effective, value-added services to our existing customer base as well as support new growth opportunities we are fostering today," Schneider said in a news release. "In addition to the increased capacity the facility will provide, incorporating redundancy in manufacturing services supports our corporate goals surrounding risk mitigation."

With its new project on the horizon, the company will be able to better serve its growing Central American customer base, Brian Reilly, ProMed's product director of healthcare materials, told Rubber News. He added that the new plant will provide the territory's work force with yet another opportunity to find jobs in an ever-growing medical manufacturing space.

"For one, it is a great environment offering an educated and highly skilled work force," Reilly said of Costa Rica. "ProMed also has many customers in this region, so establishing a facility to support them locally has benefits they can leverage. This also supports one of our company initiatives focused on risk mitigation, and having an operations facility situated in a unique location geographically helps support that goal."

The new Costa Rican facility joins the company's "ProMed Caribe" site in El Dorado, Puerto Rico, as the only ProMed facilities outside of Minnesota. The plant will be strategically positioned in the Green Valley Park in Alajuela, which is near San Jose's Juan Santamaria International Airport.

"The [Costa Rica] facility will be focused on operations, supporting both existing customers and new projects currently in our pipeline," he said. "The facility will be (38,750 square feet) and have manufacturing environments for molding, assembly, inspection, cleaning and packaging of components and assemblies."

The window of opportunity is fully open in Central America, Reilly said, and manufacturing companies have taken full advantage. As those manufacturers continue to move into Costa Rica, ProMed and its fellow suppliers are following suit to not only capitalize on the growing market, but add convenience for their manufacturers.

"We've seen many of the larger OEMs migrate their manufacturing facilities down to Costa Rica," he said. "So it makes sense that their suppliers would follow this trend to provide regional support."

Once operating at full capacity, the site will have about 50 full-time employees, Reilly said, adding to the company's team of over 300 workers.

"We have a lot of customers in that region, in Costa Rica," he said. "It just kind of makes sense to be able to support them from right across town. … We're supporting a lot of projects that have a lot of assembly steps."

Schneider called 2024 "an exciting time for ProMed's evolution," and added that the Costa Rican facility would be a crucial step in expanding the company's international customer base.

The plan for the new facility is to initially support ProMed's existing business throughout Minnesota and Puerto Rico, Reilly said, before moving the plant's priorities into higher profile projects over time.

"Some of the work we support may have numerous assembly and testing steps associated with its entire process, so a lot of manual steps are required to reach the final deliverable," Reilly said. "By tapping into a more competitive labor rate, it will enable us to scale comfortably while continuing to provide high quality components that have a lot of value to our customers."

The new site also allows for ProMed to continue to satisfy the diverse needs of its customer base. With constant new requests from its diverse list of customers, the company is working to fulfill them as efficiently as possible.

"Our customers are constantly requesting new or novel services from us to best support their overall needs," Reilly said. "By offering additional supporting services (in Costa Rica) we can minimize their supply chain costs, which has a lot of value to them."

The Costa Rica project and the opportunities it creates offer ProMed a chance to step further into the future. The facility's construction "directly aligns with the direction our customers are heading," Reilly said, adding that the strategic location can help to minimize supply chain costs in the near- and long-term.

"This new site will enable us to diversify and grow our business, both in terms of new customers and applications as well as geographically," he said. "Diversification is key to the health of our organization, as it supports our long-term goals of growth and sustainability."