Horizon Sees More Growth With Acquisition by Rival
By VITA REED
Santa Ana-based contract medical device maker Horizon Medical Inc. is being bought by Avail Medical Products Inc., a Fort Worth, Texas-based rival.
Horizon and Avail, which both are privately held, didn’t disclose financial terms of the deal. The combined company is pegged to have more than $135 million in sales this year, they said.
Horizon’s plant on Carnegie Avenue in Santa Ana is set to expand under Avail and take on more design work, according to William Goolsbee, Horizon’s chief executive. Goolsbee is joining Avail as an executive vice president.
No job cuts are expected in Santa Ana, according to Goolsbee.
“We will be hiring aggressively,” he said. “The only duplicate position is mine.”
Goolsbee also is set to be president of what now will be called Horizon Medical, an Avail Company. Horizon counts about 271 OC workers. Avail doesn’t have operations here.
“Horizon and Avail (serve) the same market. They are quite identical,” Goolsbee said. “You could argue that those are the two companies that have worked to create” medical device outsourcing, he said.
Horizon was started in 1987, while Avail dates back to 1980.
The combined companies are set to offer design, development and production services, said J. Randall Keene, Avail’s chief executive. The deal combines Horizon’s product design and process development with Avail’s large-scale manufacturing, including injection molding at several plants.
Horizon and Avail don’t disclose customers. But big names such as Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic Inc. and Abbott Laboratories Inc. use contract producers for some products to save costs.
Avail said the combined companies presently serve “11 of the nation’s top 15 medical products manufacturers.”
Horizon’s Goolsbee has estimated that about half of Horizon’s business is derived from top industry names, with a third from midsize companies and another third from startups.
Goolsbee said he sees Horizon growing largely as an engineering arm of Avail.
“If you were to call me two years from today and ask a question about our employment base in Santa Ana, by that point, it will probably be something north of 400 total people, oriented toward engineering,” he said.
Besides Horizon’s 60,000-square-foot plant in Santa Ana, Avail counts facilities in San Diego and Tijuana. The company’s three Tijuana plants total 115,000 square feet, while the two San Diego plants total 51,000 square feet.
Among the devices and products developed and made by Horizon are bone screws, custom intravenous infusion sets, thin-film dressings, electrosurgery grounding pads and leads, and in-vitro diagnostic products.
Avail’s products include surgical biopsy sets, fluid collection bags, infusion catheters, blood pressure cuffs, syringes and urinalysis vials.
Horizon and Avail are among the larger contract device makers. Others include MedTech Group Inc. of South Plainfield, N.J., and Zevex International Inc. of Salt Lake City, which has done some work for Allergan Inc. of Irvine.
Smaller contract producers include TriVirix International Inc. of Chapel Hill, N.C., Ethox Corp. of Buffalo, N.Y. and Michigan Instruments Inc. of Grand Rapids, Mich.
Outsourcing, a common practice within the computer industry, has gained ground in the medical device industry in recent years.
“There used to be a trend toward outsourcing in the medical products industry. It’s no longer a trend. It’s a reality,” Goolsbee said in an earlier interview.
