Medical device maker B. Braun Medical Inc. is taking nearly 260,000 square feet of warehouse space in Westminster in one of the bigger industrial leases the county’s seen of late.
B. Braun Medical, a unit of Germany’s B. Braun Melsungen AG that employs about 1,300 people in Orange County, plans to use the 258,506-square-foot building at 7300 Hazard Ave. to store finished products, spokesman Jonathan Braido said.
The five-year lease is valued at $9.5 million.
Distribution work is set to move from B. Braun’s Irvine campus to Westminster. How many workers are making the move isn’t clear.
B. Braun Medical, which has its U.S. headquarters in Bethlehem, Pa., is one of the county’s bigger yet quiet medical device makers.
It counts yearly sales of $1 billion, roughly 20% of B. Braun Melsungen’s yearly $4.5 billion revenue total.
The company’s main Irvine operation is in a 650,000-square-foot building on McGaw Avenue off Jamboree Road. It opened in 1974 originally as McGaw Medical Inc.
B. Braun bought McGaw Medical a decade ago for $320 million from Miami drug maker IVAX Corp.
That buy “was a mere strategic move and it was absolutely the right move, as we’ve seen,” said Caroll Neubauer, B. Braun Medical’s chief executive, in an earlier Business Journal interview.
Locally, Michael Wallace, a B. Braun Medical vice president and general manager, heads up operations.
The company also has a plant on Alton Parkway in Irvine and a medical laboratory for research and development in Costa Mesa.
It’s unclear what B. Braun Medical plans to do with the space that will be freed up with the move of distribution to Westminster.
The company makes intravenous drug solutions, electrolyte solutions and IV connectors that work without needles, cutting the risk of accidental needle sticking.
Excel, an IV bag, and Duplex,an IV container that delivers exact drug dosages to help eliminate error,are two of B. Braun Medical’s primary products made in OC.
B. Braun Medical competes with several heavyweights, including Baxter Internation-al Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Becton Dickinson & Co.
In the past, it’s battled with San Clemente-based ICU Medical Inc. The two traded lawsuits over a contract dispute.
B. Braun Medical’s partnership with ICU, which involved a medical device distribution pact, came out of the McGaw deal.
In 2002, B. Braun Medical and ICU ended the pact. At the time, Neubauer said B. Braun Medical didn’t need the partnership with ICU Medical because it has its own valve for IV solutions.
Some years ago, B. Braun Medical decided to raise its profile with what was a hot issue in the business,patient safety. It worked to get the word out to hospitals, home health agencies, outpatient surgical centers and regulators that safety is a top concern.
“One big part of our strategy in the U.S. is that we are the safety company in healthcare,” Neubauer said.
Medical errors, including giving the wrong drugs to patients or performing uncalled-for procedures, gained heavy attention from lawmakers and regulators after figures came out that showed errors killed some 100,000 Americans a year.
B. Braun Medical’s safety efforts, besides the needle-less IV connectors, included bar coding of solution bags.
B. Braun Medical sells its products to major hospital purchasing groups, which buy bulk supplies for hospitals in their networks.
Premier Inc. of San Diego and Charlotte, N.C., and Novation, out of suburban Dallas, are among its large hospital supply customers.
Neubauer estimated the vast majority of the company’s sales are to hospitals, with the remainder spread among home health agencies and outpatient surgery centers and the like.
“They have the buying power. It’s a scale of economies that come with them,” he said.
The company uses labor, robotics and automation to make its products. In some cases, its manufacturing areas are fully automated.
Brian DeRevere, Bob Goodmanson and Chip Wright of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Newport Beach office represented B. Braun and landlord RREEF Funds LLC in the Westminster lease.
Boeing Co. at one time used the building. It’s undergoing renovation before B. Braun moves in September.
