Jostra Bentley Moving From Irvine to Texas
By VITA REED
Jostra Bentley Corp., a cardiopulmonary unit of German medical device maker Jostra AG, is moving its headquarters and about 30 jobs from Irvine to The Woodlands, Texas.
The move was prompted by Jostra’s recent acquisition of rival LifeStream International Inc., according to Mike Sorna, Jostra Bentley’s president. LifeStream, which was in bankruptcy reorganization, makes tubing sets, artificial lungs, blood pumps, reservoirs and arterial filters for heart surgery.
Some Jostra Bentley operations are set to stay in Irvine for another three to five months, Sorna said.
“There are 33 (people) on our office staff in Irvine who have jobs and have been asked to move,” he said, though Sorna added he didn’t know how many workers actually will relocate to Texas.
Jostra Bentley already was planning to leave its Irvine offices, which the device maker leased from Baxter International Inc. Bentley once was part of Deerfield, Ill.-based Baxter’s Orange County cardiac and related units, which later were spun off as Irvine-based Edwards Lifesciences Corp.
In 2000, Jostra paid $30 million to Edwards for Bentley, a cardiopulmonary business. Jostra also acquired Bentley’s U.S. sales force and a Puerto Rico plant in the deal.
Jostra stands to take with it a name long tied to the local biomedical industry. Bentley is named for seminal biomed entrepreneur Jim Bentley. The company made disposable oxygenators, blood reservoirs and filters used during heart surgery.
In the LifeStream buy, Jostra picked up office, manufacturing, cleanroom and warehouse facilities about 50 miles north of Houston, Soran said.
Jostra Bentley employs 400 people in all, most of those in Puerto Rico. The LifeStream deal, Sorna said, gives Jostra Bentley a mainland U.S. production facility.
“It has 80,000 square feet of space, which allows us to handle our office needs and gives us room to grow,” he said.
In a statement, Jostra Chief Executive Christian Palme said that the LifeStream acquisition was the second strategic step, after the Bentley purchase, to establish the company in the U.S. market.
