Comar Acquires iMARK: An Exclusive Delve Into the Deal

Comar, a plastic packaging, device, and component supplier serving the medical, pharmaceutical, consumer healthcare, and other niche market segments has acquired iMARK Molding (iMARK), a contract manufacturer focused on the medical device and diagnostic industries. The combined company will offer additional best-in-class design, engineering,and custom injection molding and assembly services to Comar’s medical device, diagnostic, and pharmaceutical customers. The acquisition will support Comar’s growth objectives in the medical and pharmaceutical segments.
 
Based in Woodville, Wis., less than an hour from Minneapolis, iMARK specializes in complex injection molding aided by scientific injection molding principles, automated and manual assembly, and cleanroom operations. iMARK operates out of an ISO13485-certified 130,000-square-foot facility with over 30 injection molding presses and 15,000 square feet of ISO Class 7 certified cleanroom.
 
The acquisition enhances Comar’s ability to serve medical device customers by bringing best-in-industry employees, additional cleanroom scientific injection molding capacity, engineering talent, and quality precision measurement capabilities. Located centrally in the Midwest, iMARK is well positioned to flexibly serve Comar’s customers across geographies.
 
There will be no plant closures or employee layoffs for Comar or iMARK as part of this acquisition. Comar and iMARK fully expect to continue to deliver to their customers with no interruptions or quality issues. Mark and Linda Sturtevant, iMARK owners and founders, will retain their current positions and help run the combined company. iMARK managers and staff also will join Comar.
 
Founded in 1949, Comar has a reputation for developing creative, industry-compliant packaging and dispensing solutions for customers who count on them for quality-driven engineering and manufacturing. Comar is now better positioned with this acquisition and other recent investments to address the unmet needs of OEMs producing Class 1 and 2 medical and healthcare consumables, which are experiencing favorable tailwinds from the adoption of disposables, an aging population, and increased outsourcing.
 
Mark Sturtevant, president of iMARK, said, “We have been proud to serve our customers the last 20 years and look forward to continuing to serve them. We believe Comar’s culture is well-aligned with ours, which is focused on ‘Always the Hard Right–Never the Easy Wrong’ and providing a quality product to the same types of customers as ours. Comar brings a unique set of capabilities that will better serve our customers—full service, in-house design, development, and prototyping with IDworks, scale in procurement, deeper engineering bench with broad set of specializations, and multiple plants with capacity across the U.S.”
 
Mike Ruggieri, CEO of Comar, said, “We are so excited to be welcoming Mark and Linda Sturtevant and their team to the Comar family. Over the last 20 years, Mark and Linda have built a high-performance, customer-centric team with the best scientific injection molding capabilities we have seen across the industry. They truly know how to serve their customers with high-quality parts right the first time… and repeat that reliably. We look forward to partnering with them to better serve our current and prospective customers with new capacity and capabilities. And we look forward to continuing to acquire strategic and complementary businesses like iMARK.”
 
Ruggieri provided more details about the acquisition in the following Q&A with Medical Product Outsourcing Editor-in-Chief Sean Fenske:
 
Sean Fenske: What capabilities does iMARK bring into the fold for Comar?
Mike Ruggieri: The acquisition enhances Comar’s ability to serve medical device customers by bringing best-in-industry employees, additional cleanroom molding capacity and a show piece medical facility, a strong foundation in scientific injection molding and cavity pressure monitoring, engineering and project management talent, expertise in a variety of secondary options (inspection, assembly, sonic welding, pad printing, heat staking), precision quality measurement capabilities, and more depth of automation and robotics expertise.

We spoke to a half dozen iMARK customers during the diligence process. iMARK serves a mix of large well-known medical device OEMs and high growth established startup medical device providers. Every single customer said iMARK was either their best injection molding supplier or they shared that perch with another supplier. We knew iMARK was exceptional the day we first stepped into their facility. Speaking to the customers just reiterated that iMARK executes on their promise to customers. Customers really valued iMARK’s robust process development and validation capability, their use of instrumentation to measure the molding process and ensure repeatability, their proven quality processes, and the flexibility and capability of their engineering team.

I’ve been in a lot of molding facilities over the years. iMARK is hands down the best I’ve been in. I love one of the stories that Mark Sturtevant tells. During a quality inspection, they noticed a tiny hole in one of their parts. They were able to go back into their time-stamped process data that measures cavity pressure and identify the exact cavity, time, and conditions where the issue occurred. They were also able to determine root cause—one of the gates was clogged. And then they set control limits on their machines, so that if the incident ever occurs again, machines will shut down immediately so bad parts don’t get shipped to customers.
 
Fenske: Why was iMARK an attractive acquisition target? How does it compliment Comar?
Ruggieri: Comar and iMARK are an excellent fit. Comar’s strategy is to grow in medical device sales as a complementary business segment to its historical core—healthcare packaging. iMARK is a technical leader in medical device molding with significant immediate capacity to grow. We believe Comar can bring additional scale and resources that will accelerate iMARK’s growth with large medical device customers. We believe iMARK can bring technical medical molding proficiency that can be extended and transferred to Comar. We are very active in the M&A market and have had a robust pipeline but have a high bar for completing acquisitions and we’ve remained very disciplined. In this case, we established a personal relationship with Mark and Linda and through early conversations realized the value and symbiotic nature of this partnership was undeniable.The check list of qualities we find attractive about the partnership was quite extensive but included:
 

• Cultural alignment: Both companies focused on delivering innovative solutions to customers and providing exceptional experiences for employees
• Strong and capable team in every major functional area
• Well capitalized with good assets—infrastructure, machines platforms, automation and quality inspection equipment and capacity to support growth
• Complementary geographic footprint to expand Comar’s plant network
• Proximity to Minneapolis-St. Paul hotbed of medical device OEMs
• Market-leading customer list
• Molding complex and high cost of failure parts
• Expertise in product design and design for manufacturability (DFM)
• Expertise in scientific injection molding, process validation, and process control

 
Fenske: What does this acquisition mean for Comar’s customers?
Ruggieri: The acquisition will enable us to better serve Comar’s existing and prospective customers in the following ways:

• Bring best-in-industry employees, additional cleanroom scientific injection molding know-how, engineering talent, and quality precision measurement capabilities.
• Offer additional best-in-class capacity to Comar customers with their state-of-the-art production facility and equipment with significant available capacity.
• Provide benefits of scale (purchasing power, access to resources—people and capital, diversification, reputation).
• Offer a fast, flexible engineering team with additional depth and breadth in engineering capabilities and specialization.
• Experienced team with proven validation processes to effectively bring tools on line.
• Offer geographic flexibility from a Midwestern location.
   

In summary, our focus and full-service capabilities will allow us to accelerate our customer’s speed to market from Concept to Commercialization so they can deliver life changing solutions.
 
Fenske: How will this impact the customers of iMARK?
Ruggieri: Our top priority is to ensure customers continue to get the same excellent service and quality that they have been getting. Over time we think there will be an opportunity to share capabilities, capacity, and best practices across organizations. We think this will ultimately give both iMARK and Comar customers better access to engineering expertise, breadth of manufacturing locations and technologies.

Comar and iMARK’s top priority will be to ensure no risk of disruption in service to its customers. Shipments will continue to arrive as promised, product quality will not be compromised, and there will be no deterioration in customer support.
iMARK will continue to deliver quality products, on-time and the strategic acquisition of iMARK by Comar will benefit customers by:

• Providing customers with additional capabilities across the Comar portfolio (additional expertise molding long, narrow parts (syringes), high speed multi variable printing, complex automated in-line assembly, ideation & innovation)
• Risk reduction through additional scale, access to capital, and resources
• Additional sites capable of medical molding in California and New Jersey to support capacity expansion and business continuity
• Organizational commitment to productivity and process improvements through continuous improvement philosophy

 
Fenske: What is the vision going forward with regard to this acquisition?
Ruggieri: It accelerates our medical growth strategy, which is focused on high value surgical disposables, diagnostic consumables, and drug delivery devices and components. This is a pivotal investment to accelerate our ability to serve these attractive market subsegments and increases our ability to engage in strategic projects overnight. It also strengthens and provides a critical mass of resources and capacity focused on medical device, diagnostic and drug delivery to allow Comar to expand beyond our historical strength in pharmaceutical and healthcare and consumer packaging. As we have over the past three years, we will continue to invest in capabilities to deliver more value to our existing and prospective customers as they continue to outsource.  Comar is right-sized to serve both well-funded start-ups and established multinational OEMs on new product introductions or transfer programs.
 
Fenske: Do you have any additional comments or thoughts you’d like to share?
Ruggieri: We are extremely thankful for the opportunity to partner with Mark and Linda Sturtevant and the iMARK team to enhance and strengthen our customer value proposition and we are excited about the opportunity to provide more opportunities to our entire workforce as we continue to grow. iMARK and Comar cultures have a lot in common. We are both focused on serving our customers and delivering superior quality. iMARK has a great motto that every employee knows and lives by – “Always the hard right, never the easy wrong.” We love that. And believe it is very aligned with what we live by day in and day out in the plants – “Right the First Time.” We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Mark and Linda and the iMARK team to continue to bring the best quality and service to our customers.