Ossur Americas, a medical device maker that’s part of Iceland’s Ossur HF, is moving its headquarters and combining operations in Foothill Ranch.
The maker of prosthetic lower limbs signed a six-year lease valued at about $5 million for a 37,144-square-foot office building at 27051 Towne Center Drive, according to sources.
Ossur’s scheduled to move to the building by February.
The device maker is pulling people from two offices in Aliso Viejo and one from Cam-arillo to staff the new office in Foothill Ranch.
The building is set to house about 170 workers, including those in sales, marketing, customer service, finance and human resources.
Ossur is moving 100 workers from Aliso Viejo and 12 from Camarillo.
“An organization is always a lot more effective when you can be in one location,” said Mahesh Mansukhani, Ossur Americas’ president. “Everyone can look one another in the eye when we’re trying to get things done. I’m a big believer in relationships.”
Mansukhani comes from DuPont, more formally known as E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., and took on his role at Ossur in 2008. He replaced Eythor Bender, who now is chief ex-ecutive of Rex Bionics Ltd., a San Francisco startup.
Ossur wanted to keep its Americas headquarters in Orange County and didn’t want to risk losing workers, Mansukhani said.
“We’ve got a really good labor pool,” he said. “We’ve found that we can recruit very good people locally anyway, so we saw no reason to jeopardize that and move elsewhere wholesale.”
Ossur owns two buildings totaling about 37,000 square feet in Aliso Viejo. It’s still considering whether to sell or lease one or both, Mansukhani said.
The company plans to keep its Camarillo site as a distribution center.
The move expands Ossur’s existing operations in Foothill Ranch. The company already is in a 54,600-square-foot building there that it bought in 1996 and plans to keep. Sales, marketing, engineering and research and development are there.
Fifty of Ossur’s 161 workers now in Foothill Ranch are moving to the new Towne Center building.
The existing building is set to handle research and development and operations.
Overall, Ossur employs 670 people in North America. Its other sites include a distribution center in Paulsboro, N.J.
The company makes Power Knee, a motored prosthesis for above-the-knee am-putees, Rheo Knee, a bionic prosthesis for below the knee, and the Proprio, a prosthetic foot.
Global Market
The company and its competitors, such as Irvine-based Freedom Innovations Inc., are part of a global market for prosthetics that’s valued at around $500 million annually.
Ossur is the second-largest player after Ger-many’s Otto Bock HealthCare GMBH, which has its North American hub in Minneapolis.
The company, which was founded in 1971 by Icelandic amputee Ossur Kristinsson, is traded on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange with yearly sales of about $350 million.
Half of Ossur’s revenue comes from Europe, with 46% from North America and the remaining 4% from Asia.
The company sells to hospitals, orthopedic clinics, podiatrists, distributors, prosthetists, orthotists and government agencies such as the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.
Ossur’s prosthetics are used by people who have lost limbs to diseases such as diabetes or cancer or through injuries, as with soldiers who’ve lost lower limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The company doesn’t sell prosthetic arms and hands because the market is smaller, according to Mansukhani.
“When you think about diabetics and vascular disease, which drives a large portion of our business, unfortunately it seems to impact feet much more than the upper extremities,” he said.
