Apogee 'seeing the fruits of our labor, finally'

Apogee 'seeing the fruits of our labor, finally'

Triangle Business Journal
September 17, 2004

By Amanda Jones

YOUNGSVILLE - Apogee Medical Inc.'s core business of making disposable, plastic catheters has spurred a $2.5 million project to more than double the company's manufacturing space in Franklin County.

The homegrown company expects to hire up to 20 more employees in 2005 to accommodate an expected increase in business after it diversified its line of medical device products last year. Apogee currently employs 75 people.

"We're seeing the fruits of our labor, finally," says Brent Robling, owner and president of Apogee, which was incorporated in Raleigh in 1991 but was moved to Youngsville in 2000.

Apogee is expanding its plant from 35,000 square feet to 80,000 square feet to make room for new automated equipment, as the company's product lines have been expanded beyond the urological catheters the company was founded on.

Paragon Commercial Bank of Raleigh is the financing partner for the project.

Robling says the company now manufactures products used in cardiology, radiology and surgical procedures. Those are in addition to the core catheter product line, which has grown to 1.3 million pieces a month since Apogee started making them in 1991.

Providing services from initial design to product distribution, Apogee has grown its annual revenue by an average of 20 percent a year since product expansion began in 1996, Robling says. He wouldn't disclose exact sales figures, but he says revenue was between $5 million and $10 million in 2003.

"We'll probably grow at that rate the next three to five years before we start to see that slow a bit - probably by choice," he says. "More and more medical device groups are farming out their work."

According to the California business research organization Larta Institute, nearly 25 percent of medical device manufacturing is outsourced to contract manufacturers such as Apogee, and that number is expected to grow. "Firms such as Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific claim that their core competencies lie in marketing and product design, rather than manufacturing," states an August report form Larta.

A report by another research firm, Business Communications Company Inc., states that U.S. catheter sales are growing by 12.3 percent a year, and the market value is expected to exceed $23 billion in 2009.

Apogee represents an industry that Triangle economic developers hope to expand. Wake County's economic development group, for example, is working to form a medical device organization to bring together executives from companies such as Teleflex Medical Group in Durham and Closure Medical Corp. in Raleigh for networking purposes.

Research Triangle Regional Partnership also has identified the medical device market as a target industry for job growth over the next five years.

"In the Triangle, I would say the industry is in its infancy," says John Nelms, director of existing industry for Wake County Economic Development. "With our pharmaceutical and biotech industries, it increases the likelihood that companies like Apogee will grow in this area."