Precision Coating expands further into Costa Rica
Robert A. DeAngelis, owner and president of Precision Coating, Inc., a Katahdin company.
When asked to describe Precision Coating, Inc., a Katahdin company, owner and president Robert DeAngelis summed it up well: “If you, or anyone you know, has ever had surgery, you’re intimately familiar with Precision Coating’s work -- though you may have been asleep at the time.” The Hudson company specializes in coatings for virtually any medical device on the market.
In January, Precision acquired Hudson-based Boyd Coatings Research, which positioned the company to increase manufacturing capacity, both in Hudson and in a newly-opened facility in Costa Rica. DeAngelis spoke about the importance of lean manufacturing techniques, quality assurance, and what the Costa Rica expansion means for the company.
What does your company make?
Guide wires for catheters, surgical tools and needles, among other medical devices, are coated with our plastics formulations, allowing doctors to use these products and tools without endangering patients’ safety. With surgical wire, one of the benefits of the coating is that it allows the wires to flow easily inside the body, enabling resistance-free movement. We serve global healthcare and medical device companies with engineered solutions in specialty plastic coatings, such as Teflon, medical PTFE, and medical FEP. We conform medical device coating thicknesses to customer specifications, built on a portfolio of over 3,500+ unique medical components in a range of medical coating specialties. Delivering world-class service is backed by a core competency in holding coating deposition tolerances in the 2.5 - 10 micron range on a variety of medical device wires.
What makes you stand out?
We have been supporting the medical device field since the early application of Teflon on a guide wire in the late 1980s, and with our recent acquisition of Boyd Coatings Research, are now the No. 1 medical device coating company in the world. We are positioned to increase our manufacturing capacity in our 50,000-square-foot, world-class facility in Hudson, along with our newly opened facility in Costa Rica -- helping to serve more than 65 medical device manufacturing companies in Costa Rica, many of which are customers of PCCI. We practice lean manufacturing methods, create our own formulations, and have recently added new and automated technologies in support of our coating deposition capabilities. While we are proud of all this capacity, our technological resources, and engineering expertise, what drives all of this is our ability -- which we believe is unique in this industry -- to partner with customers to ensure we are delivering the product they need exactly as they need it. After all, precision is necessary in our work so that doctors can be precise in theirs.
What does the Costa Rica move mean for you?
Opening a facility in Costa Rica this year was a strategic move that allows PCCI to be closer to our customers and will help in reducing the costs of a complex supply chain for all involved. With an increasing amount of medical device products being produced in Costa Rica, it has become a regional hub for medical device, biotech and healthcare companies, and Costa Rica presents the best combination of operating cost, workforce talent and logistical advantages in establishing a strategically located PTFE-coating facility. In a nutshell, having a PTFE/Teflon coating application facility in Costa Rica brings us even closer to our customers, shortening the supply chain from weeks to days, and represents a key element of an optimized supply chain for the medical device market in Costa Rica.
What are your long-term plans?
As the medical device and products markets continue to expand globally at double-digit growth rates, Precision Coating will continue to invest in PTFE/Teflon coating deposition technology to meet the ever-increasing quality demands of customers. We expect to invest in the Hudson facility in the areas of process engineering, coating formulation development and further coating automation. Hudson will be positioned to serve global customers, while the Costa Rica facility will serve Costa Rican-based customers solely.
Any additional information you would like to share?
Because we serve an industry where lives truly depend on the quality of our work, we are aware of how crucial delivering precise product is. At PCCI, we bear the responsibility of being global leaders in the medical device coating industry with care. We have a saying in the company: "The surface is only the beginning." A common industry practice is to approach orders as jobs. When working with Precision Coating, we begin with finding out what surface coatings customers need, and our collaborative business model is what drives and supports everything else. Customers get the full benefits of our engineering experience and expertise through our partnership with them on each project. This model continues to be a successful one.
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