The opening of a new Epimed facility in Texas will create room for more manufacturing and additional workers at its medical device factory in Johnstown, the company said.
The pain-management product company announced that it will be expanding operations to Farmers Branch, a suburb of Dallas. The company will move its president and regional office from its current Las Colinas, Texas, location to the new 23,000-square-foot facility over a phased period, Executive Vice President N. Sandor Racz said.
“Expanding our operations here in Texas will alleviate some of our space concerns up in the New York facility,” he said, referring to the company’s headquarters in Johnstown’s Crossroads Business Park.
The company is currently leasing the new building, which it purchased for $1.5 million, back to its previous owner until it can finish the modifications needed to house its distribution center and produce sterile packaging.
Racz said he is unsure what will happen to the Las Colinas facility. It will be a while before Epimed transfers offices to the Farmers Branch location, though.
Epimed manufactures direct market pain management products, including catheters, needles, introducers, trays and kits, radiation safety garments, eyewear and gloves. The packaging for these products is bulky, Racz said.
“They take up a good amount of space,” he said. “So what we’re able to do by [expanding] is open up more of our machine shop and manufacturing lines by removing this stuff and alleviating the space constraints there.”
The company manufactures all of its products at the Johnstown plant on Sal Landrio Drive and sterilizes it in Glens Falls. Most of the company’s research and development occurs in Texas labs. Though the executive offices are in Texas, the company is technically headquartered in Johnstown, Racz said.
The Farmers Branch facility is an ideal distribution site, he said. Expanding there will create more jobs in customer service, sales and basic office staff.
Though the process of moving into the new Farmers Branch site will be slow, he said, there is immediate growth opportunity for manufacturing at the Johnstown facility. “The actual meat of what we do is in New York,” Racz said. “So the first expansion of any jobs created would be in New York.”
He didn’t say how many jobs will be added in Johnstown, where more than 80 people currently work.
U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., visited the Johnstown facility earlier this month as part of an upstate New York tour designed to highlight growing manufacturing businesses.
Categories: Business, Schenectady County
