Ribbon-Cutting Celebrates Medartis As Part Of Community
Ribbon-Cutting Celebrates Medartis As Part Of Community
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Ribbon-Cutting Celebrates Medartis As Part Of CommunityFive months after Medartis successfully acquired Nextremity Solutions, 1195 Polk Drive, Warsaw, the merger appears to be going just as both companies hoped.
Tuesday morning, the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate Medartis as part of the community. The world headquarters for Medartis is in Basel, Switzerland, and the U.S. headquarters of Medartis is in Warsaw.
In May, Medartis announced it had completed the acquisition of Nextremity Solutions. The acquisition was announced March 7 and the total purchase price for the transaction was up to $70 million and included milestone and earn-out payments of up to $30 million, according to a news release at the time on Nextremity Solution’s website.
Rod Mayer, president of Medartis U.S., on Tuesday said the company was getting close to releasing some new products that were designed under Nextremity.
“Prior to the acquisition, Nextremity Solutions was a product development company with an emphasis on both lower extremity and upper extremity. We just recently released two of four technologies for the foot and ankle. Those are in what we call early beta evaluations. The feedback from our surgeon team members have been excellent, so we’ll be preparing to launch those on a national basis as we head into 2023,” he said.
Last week, Indiana Gov. Eric J. Holcomb’s office announced Holcomb would lead an economic development trip to Germany and Switzerland this week, which will include a meeting with Medartis on Thursday.
Mayer said there’s a very large contingent of representation from Indiana visiting the manufacturing facility in Basel, Switzerland.
“As we understand, there’s several initiatives here in the state of Indiana with Switzerland, so it’s a great opportunity for Governor Holcomb, the secretary of commerce and others to get to know the leadership team in Basel. We’re really excited about this opportunity to hear more about how we might be able to partner with the state on some of our worldwide initiatives, as well as our initiatives here in the state of Indiana,” Mayer said.
It’s the kind of thing he was looking for when talks of the acquisition began last year.
“We often say here business after all is nothing more than a bunch of human relationships. That’s how this all started a year ago,” Mayer said. “Here we are now five months into the merger, and it’s amazing that our state representatives are there in Switzerland this week to really begin to understand that we have a global presence, but at the same time this is ... headquarters for the U.S. right here in the Orthopaedic Capital of the World.”
The company is hiring, Mayer said.
“All you have to do is look at our website. We’re posting almost every week new positions,” he said. “I don’t want to be premature in my expectations, but I think 20 to 25% growth is probably something that we’ll see over the next year. Combination of increased responsibilities to add to our manufacturing team, engineering team. So, yes, we expect to see some ongoing new opportunities presented for our community.”
There’s still a chance the Warsaw headquarters could expand in the future.
Mayer said, “One of the first things the Board of Directors did when they visited us in July was they wanted to know where could we expand. So there is land just to the north of us. In the future, is that a possibility? I think most definitely. No immediate plans for expansion, but certainly that’s in the horizon of the next five, seven to 10 years. There will be no doubt we’ll probably need to expand and we have the opportunity to do so right here in the Tech Park.”
With the acquisition, the organization of leadership changed.
Mayer went from the chief executive officer of Nextremity Solutions to the president of Medartis U.S. He has commercial responsibilities for the U.S.
“The way we’re organized now is our CFO, Dan Stichter, reports to the worldwide CFO. So Dan will have finance, HR and IT responsibilities. We like to say there’s a dotted line to me, but his finance team, HR team, IT team is to support our commercial team,” Mayer said.
Travis Christman is the vice president of quality and regulatory, while Chris Cook is the vice president of operations. They will report to the worldwide chief operations officer.
“Reporting structure has changed some. We’re still the same team though, and I’m really thankful for that,” Mayer said.
In Warsaw, the company employs north of 100 and Mayer said they’re striving to not lose the culture they’ve created.
“Not only here, but over the last 9-1/2 years. They are an entrepreneurially-driven organization. While it’s a publicly traded company on the Swiss Exchange, the majority of the company is owned by the Board of Directors. And so, I’d say our culture has remained intact. We certainly realize now as a publicly traded company we have additional responsibilities we haven’t had historically, but I think there’s still a high level of energy here. We now know we have an opportunity to impact patients and surgeons all around the world versus just to focus on the U.S. So, I think it’s been a great collaboration and look forward to the next years for sure.”
