Accellent Buys Lake Region Medical

Accellent Inc. is buying privately held Lake Region Medical. The merged business will be called Lake Region Medical and the company will continue to use the Accellent brand in marketing its Advanced Surgical business. The move is part of a strategy to grow Accellent’s its Cardio & Vascular division.

Wilmington, Mass.-based Accellent provides outsourced manufacturing and engineering services to the medical device industry, and Minneapolis, Minn.-based Lake Region Medical is an original development manufacturer (ODM) of minimally invasive devices and delivery systems to the cardiology and endovascular markets. Lake Region develops and markets medical devices for cardiovascular, stimulation therapy, neurovascular, and peripheral vascular applications. The company collaborates with physicians and university research facilities on new product developments and has established development and distribution partnerships with medical device companies globally.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“Over the last several years we have been positioning Accellent for growth. We have refined our strategic focus, improved our execution, optimized our operations and built a robust sales pipeline. Lake Region Medical is an excellent company with a strong quality reputation, product development capability involving clinical thought leaders and a deep medical device manufacturing history,” said Don Spence, chairman and CEO of Accellent, who will lead the new enterprise. “Combining our companies will create a leading interventional vascular business with more scale, a broader product offering and deeper customer relationships.”

Jeremy Friedman, president and COO of the Cardio & Vascular unit called the move an “instrumental step” in the company’s overall market strategy.

“Lake Region Medical is a leading designer and producer of guide wires and other wire-based products used for therapy delivery in minimally invasive procedures,” Friedman said. This makes for a perfect fit with our product strategy and will allow us to offer our customers a strong portfolio of both guide wire and catheter products.”

Lake Region was founded in 1947 by Joe Fleischhacker Sr., who, according to the company, developed the process to manufacture pacing coils used with the first implantable pacemakers. Since then, the company has been owned and operated by the Fleischhacker family.

Lake Region Medical’s CEO and owner, Joe Fleischhacker Jr. said: “We are pleased that we have found a company like Accellent who shares our values and strong focus on patient care yet brings different strengths to the table. This combination supports Lake Region’s product strategy to enhance our ODM competence in a wider range of products used for delivering therapy to patients. On behalf of Kate, Mark and the rest of the Fleischhacker family, we all look forward to the continued growth and success of Lake Region Medical,” he added.

Mark Fleischhacker, COO and owner of Lake Region added that the Accellent and Lake Region combination is the “right strategic move” for the company at this time.

“Combining Lake Region’s strength in guidewires with Accellent’s strength in catheters will create a supplier that can offer interventional delivery, access and retrieval systems to complement our customers’ core therapeutic devices,” he said. “In parallel, Accellent’s deep contract manufacturing expertise will provide an even stronger precision component offering to all of our medical device customers.”

As part of the transaction, all of Lake Region’s employees and facilities in Chaska, Minn; New Ross and Galway, Ireland; and Shanghai, China, will become part of the combined enterprise.

“Lake Region Medical has an unparalleled reputation within the cardiology and endovascular markets as well as the industry as a whole. We are pleased to be able to carry on this legacy under the Lake Region name as we grow the combined company,” said Don Spence.

The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, is expected to close in the first quarter of this year.