viant Archives - Medical Design Sourcing

Viant expands Design & Development West Center of Excellence in California

Viant tripled the cleanroom space at its expanded Design & Development West Center of Excellence. [Photo courtesy of Viant]

Viant today said it has completed the expansion of its Design & Development West Center of Excellence in Fremont, California.

The facility’s footprint is now 67% larger, totaling 25,000 sf² across two buildings co-located with the company’s complex molding and assembly facility. The expansion triples the amount of ISO 8 and ISO 7 cleanroom space to 6,000 sf².

New capabilities from the expansion include extrusion and plasma surface modification. The new Extrusion Center of Excellence offers quick-turn capabilities and expertise to help customers iterate quickly and solve complex challenges, the company said. Gas plasma surface modification, meanwhile, is used to tailor material surface properties to alter adhesion, sealing and other characteristics to improve devi…

Viant kicks off new expansion in Costa Rica

A rendering of one of two new manufacturing buildings underway at Viant Costa Rica [Image courtesy of Viant]

Viant announced today that it has begun another medical device manufacturing facility expansion in Heredia, Costa Rica.

This is the second consecutive year that Foxborough, Massachusetts–based Viant has kicked off an expansion in Heredia. The new project will create a 43% larger footprint, for a total of more than 250,000 square feet. The number of buildings on the site will grow from four to seven.

The expansion will primarily support complex interventional and other minimally invasive devices.

Viant officials expect new manufacturing and warehouse buildings to be in use by late November 2022. An additional manufacturing building will open in March 2023. They project that revenue from the Heredia site will double by 2024.

“Outsourcing allows medical device manufacturers to foc…

How medtech is tackling supply chain challenges

A host of medical device companies with manufacturing in Puerto Rico found their supply chains impacted by Hurricane Maria in 2017. It was a harbinger of what was to come. [Image is public domain]Join us at DeviceTalks Boston on May 10-11 to hear how medical device companies are propping open supply lines and ensuring a steady flow of products to customers in a constantly changing world.

Sharing best practices is more important than ever because supply chain challenges aren’t expected to diminish post-pandemic. That’s because superstorms, fires, droughts and other extreme events driven by climate change are already straining the industry’s supply chain — and it could get a lot worse.

(Go to DeviceTalks Boston’s site to register!)

Over the two-day meeting we’ll hear how companies large and small are adapting to new demands, including:

How Viant and Vapotherm combined forces to meet unforeseen demands brought on by the COVID-19 pandemi…

Contract manufacturers fuel medtech expansion in Costa Rica

Medical device manufacturing is flourishing in the Central American country, spurred by a host of incentives.

[Image from Unsplash]This year is seeing a wave of expansions by medtech contract manufacturers in Costa Rica.

Medtech OEMs have made the Central American company a manufacturing hub since the 1990s. Major companies operating there include Abbott, Bayer, Boston Scientific, Cardinal Health, Edwards Lifesciences, Hologic, Medtronic, Philips, Smith+Nephew and Wright Medical. Eight of these are among the top 20 exporters in Costa Rica, representing nearly $2.7 million in medical device exports in 2019 — 73% of the total.

Medtech OEMs in Costa Rica want their suppliers nearby, making the Central American country a magnet for contract manufacturers. The addition of medtech sterilization facilities in Costa Rica — BeamOne (now Steris) in 2009 and Sterigenics in 2013 — also helped spur more contract manufacturing. Before that, manufacturers had to ship prod…

Viant expands ortho plant in France

Viant announced today that it completed a more than $8 million expansion of its France-based Orthopedic Implant & Coating Center of Excellence.

Foxborough, Mass.-based Viant’s Chaumont, France facility expansion includes a new building with a controlled-environment room and an investment in recently FDA-cleared vacuum plasma spray (VPS) coating technology, according to a news release.

The company’s VPS coating capability will allow for the application of titanium coatings or a dual-layer of titanium and hydroxyapatite (HA) coatings, which can add friction to anchor orthopedic implants including hips, knees and shoulders. The Chaumont facility possesses existing HA coating capabilities which Viant expects will be complemented by the new VPS capability.

Viant said in the release that the upgrades to the facility enhance its capabilities as a single-source supplier while immediately upgrading its capacity to partner with additional orthopedi…

Dems seek to force EPA action on ethylene oxide monitoring

(Image from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration)

Democrats in both houses of Congress have introduced legislation that would force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to better monitor emissions of ethylene oxide (EtO) from plants that manufacture the toxic gas or use it to sterilize medical devices.

The Public Health Air Quality Act of 2020, sponsored by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (Del.), would require immediate EPA action to monitor emissions at “facilities contributing to high local cancer rates and other health threats from dangerous pollutants.” The list includes eight medtech sterilization plants included among 25 EPA-designated, EtO-using or -producing facilities:

Get the full story on our sister site, Medical Design & Outsourcing.