MILLS RIVER—RAUMEDIC, a family-owned German company, is nearing its first anniversary at its $27 million development and production facility in western North Carolina and plans to hire in 2017.
The 60,000-square-foot plant, in the Henderson County town of Mills River, produces medical and pharmaceutical plastic and rubber components. When it opened in January 2016 it became the company’s U.S. headquarters and its first North American production facility.
The company enters 2017 with 55 employees at its 10-acre site in the Broadpointe Industrial Park, south of the Asheville Regional Airport. It plans to add an undetermined number more in 2017, according to company spokeswoman Antje Kizina, and expects to have as many as 172 employees working at the site within the next several years, at an average annual wage of $55,000.
The production workers operate extrusion and liquid-injection molding equipment and use various assembly processes to make tubing and parts for pumps used in nutrition and pain management; and tubing, filters and drip chambers used in eye surgeries.
RAUMEDIC employs about 680 total. The company’s other three facilities are in Germany. Before it launched the North Carolina facility, the company operated a sales and engineering office and logistics center in Leesburg, Va., which it has integrated onto the Mills River campus.
