Merger Marries Design and Manufacture

Two providers of medical disposable manufacturing services, Avail (Fort Worth, TX) and Horizon Medical Outsourcing (Santa Ana, CA), have joined forces with the goal of becoming the largest provider of services to the medical manufacturing industry. Effective May 6, 2002, the merger will unite Avail's manufacturing strengths with Horizon's design capabilities.

Explains J. Randall Keene, president and CEO of Avail: "Horizon has done a tremendous job designing products and process development. Avail, on the other hand, has been focused on efficient, high-volume manufacturing. So when you put the two together, we will be very effective at designing products for manufacturability and at designing the manufacturing process from the start-up stage all the way through large-scale production."

Keene says that when he and Horizon president William A. Goolsbee first discussed a partnership back in 1994, people questioned their vision. "They looked at us like we were crazy. Now, not only are we seeing companies naming VPs and executive VPs of outsourcing or strategic sourcing, but we're seeing companies create entire organizations that are filled with dozens of high-level people whose roles are solely to work with outside manufacturing partners." Keene adds that an outsourcer's particular strength, in addition to producing quality products efficiently and cost-effectively, is its ability to scale up manufacturing rapidly to get product to market.

Avail will retain its name, and Horizon will now be known as Horizon Medical Outsourcing, an Avail company. The partnership will maintain 13 locations in the United States and Mexico, with 500,000 sq ft and more than 2000 employees. Capabilities of interest to packaging professionals include form-fill-seal operations, tray and pouch packaging, sterilization management, liquid filling, injection molding design, cleanroom assembly, warehousing, shipping, and real-time inventory control.