Denver Business Journal -- Colorado’s growing bioscience sector has received much attention in recent years for hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants, innovative new drugs and Nobel Prize-winning college professors.But the medical-device industry, which is considered a sector of bioscience, tends to get overlooked — though it generates significantly more jobs and produces more products than other sectors of bioscience.
Statistics show that medical-device manufacturers are the muscle behind the state’s fledgling bioscience industry.
Colorado’s bioscience job growth in the Denver area has been particularly strong, with employment up 17 percent since 2001, according to a recent report from Battelle, a nonprofit applied technology development company based in Columbus, Ohio,
Battelle said medical-device companies provide 50 percent of bioscience jobs.
Other medical device companies, such as Lakewood-based CarideanBCT Inc., have grown locally — although the ownership hasn’t been based in Colorado for almost 20 years.
Denise Brown, executive director of the Colorado BioScience Association, said the industry has grown mostly through individual inventors or spin-offs from larger companies. Case in point: CarideanBCT, formerly Gambro BCT, recently changed its name after Gambro AB, a multinational health care company based in Sweden, spun it off.
While CarideanBCT’s private ownership remains in Europe, the move was intended to establish the company as an independent, American-based company with a global presence.
The manufacturer, which specializes in blood component technology used by blood banks, hospitals and clinical biotech researchers, employs 2,300 people worldwide and 1,800 in its Lakewood headquarters.
David Perez, president of CarideanBCT, said the acquisition from private-equity owners has forced the company to expand its work force.
The company, which Perez said will report $500 million in revenue in 2008, expects to add 450 new employees at its Lakewood headquarters by year-end.
Perez said CarideanBCT ran out of space at its main campus near Sixth Avenue and Simms Boulevard. The company recently signed a lease for 90,000 square feet of space at the Denver West office park, which will house administrative employees.
Colorado is considered an ideal place for medical device companies because the state is centralized, inexpensive (relative to California) and good for recruiting.
Unlike other manufacturers, which are prone to sending jobs overseas for cheaper labor costs, medical device companies tend to keep its jobs in the state.
“A lot of it has to do with the reliability of being able to manage quality,” said Brian E. Baldwin, chairman emeritus and founder of Baxa Corp. “That’s hard to do in China unless your only consideration is low-cost labor.”
Perez said it’s important to keep engineers and manufacturers in close range because of the regulatory and safety concerns shared by medical device companies.
Baldwin co-founded Baxa with Ron Baxa in Chicago in 1975.
Baxa, which developed oral syringes for precise medicine doses, relocated to Englewood in 1981. Now, the privately held company employs 450 people and has branched out into automated medication-dispensing. Baldwin said the sector is profitable, and it’s fulfilling to indirectly help others recover from sickness through medical devices.
“People like to work for businesses that do good for people,” Baldwin said. “Sooner or later, everybody is going to get sick.”
