PBS Biotech, Inc. Acquires Medical Devices Contract Manufacturing Firm Integrity CMI
Innovative Bioprocess Solutions
NEWS RELEASE, For Immediate Release
PBS Biotech, Inc. Acquires Medical Devices
Contract Manufacturing Firm Integrity CMI
Fast growth biotech firm acquires full-service medical device manufacturer with ISO 13485 certification and FDA registration.
Camarillo, California, August 23, 2011–PBS Biotech®, Inc., a developer of state of the art single-use bioreactors for the fast growing biotechnology market, announced today it has acquired Integrity CMI, a Camarillo, CA based medical device design and manufacturing company. Under terms of the agreement PBS Biotech purchased Integrity CMI and will integrate the company into ongoing operations.
Integrity CMI has extensive experience in design, assembly, testing, packaging and sterilization of medical devices and biotech products. The company has certified class 7 (10,000) clean room operations as well as non-clean room assembly and testing facilities. The added technical capabilities and factory space will significantly augment PBS Biotech’s manufacturing capability for disposable vessels, bags, and related plastic parts assemblies of single-use bioreactors under stringent clean room environmental controls.
“Integrity CMI is a powerful addition to the company adding substantial ISO and FDA certified design, manufacturing and test capabilities,” said Dr. Brian Lee, co-founder and CEO of PBS Biotech. “Oscar Garza and his team are experts at medical and biotech equipment production and have extensive engineering and manufacturing experience vital to the rapid growth of PBS,” he said.
“We are thrilled to become part of the PBS team and to contribute to making the industry’s leading single-use bioreactor products,” said Mr. Garza, the CEO of Integrity and a 25-year engineering and manufacturing veteran of medical and pharma firms including Baxter, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Medtronic. “PBS Biotech is an exciting company on a path to become a industry leader providing biopharma with innovative bioreactors that can dramatically improve the development of drugs and vaccines and reduce costs. We are pleased to be part of the family and to help the company to its next level of success,” he said.
Over the coming weeks the two companies, located in facilities just a few miles apart, will reconfigure the assets and personnel to maximize design and engineering operations and build out the manufacturing facilities, which hold ISO 13485 certification and are FDA registered. The facility will focus on manufacturing the PBS disposable vessels and bags employing the industry’s highest quality levels and standards. This will allow PBS Biotech to internally control and document every step of the production process from raw materials, assembly, final test, packaging, and sterilization to insure product quality and traceability.
Rapid adoption of single-use bioreactors is occurring across all stages of the bioprocess as firms embrace single-use technology to drive out costs in both R&D and production while increasing process flexibility, operational efficiency and accelerating time to market. PBS Biotech offers a product line of bioreactors with the industry’s most advanced features such as ease of use, full scalability from lab to production, low shear by novel Air Wheel™ mixing mechanism and plug and play configurations. The bioreactors are used in developing and producing animal, insect, and plant cell cultures for creation of life saving and quality of life improving therapeutic protein drugs and vaccines.
About PBS Biotech
PBS Biotech, Inc. is a US corporation that manufactures fully scalable and easy to use single-use bioreactors for global biotechnology organizations. The company has patented innovative industrial designs and advanced software driven control systems that produce low shear, cell culture solutions improving operational flexibility and process efficiency, reducing operating costs and accelerating time to market for biotechnology customers. With headquarters in Camarillo, CA. the company is poised for rapid growth to support industry demand for single-use technologies. PBS Biotech is a member of the BioProcess Systems Alliance (BPSA).
Contact: James B. Schultz, VP – Sales & Marketing
+1 805-990-6177
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PBS Biotech Named Business of the Year by Pacific Coast Business Times
Innovative Bioprocess Solutions
NEWS RELEASE, For Immediate Release
PBS Biotech Named Business of the Year by Pacific Coast Business Times
PBS honored for developing advanced single-use bioreactors for biopharmas to produce vaccines, drugs and biosimilars for global market
Business of Year Award for West Ventura County was presented to Dr. Brian Lee, second from left, president of PBS Biotech, Inc. by Henry Dubroff, editor and chairman of Pacific Coast Business Times, far left. Congratulating Dr. Lee were US Rep. Lois Capps, CA-23, second from right, and Elizabeth Eckhols, far right, Regional Administrator, US Small Business Administration.
Dr. Brian Lee, co-founder and CEO of PBS Biotech, received the award for Business of the Year for West Ventura County, from editor and chairman Henry Dubroff during an awards ceremony held today at the Fess Parker’s Double Tree Resort, Santa Barbara. Pacific Coast Business Times is a weekly business newspaper covering the tri-counties of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.
“This is a tremendous honor for the PBS Biotech team to be recognized by Pacific Coast Business Times and the business community for our hard work and creativity in developing bioreactors that can accelerate the development of drugs and vaccines worldwide,” said Dr. Lee. “Our focus is to provide our biopharma customers with bioreactors and bioprocess solutions that deliver value and competitive advantage to their business,” he said.
PBS Biotech, which has corporate headquarters here, and includes sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing and clean room operations, won over more than 70 firms nominated in its category. The company expects to make significant additions to its work force across all sectors over the coming months. The firm is growing rapidly as biopharma firms worldwide adopt single-use bioreactors, which offer lower capital and operating costs, increased manufacturing flexibility and shorten development time to market for drug and vaccine products.
The awards lunch was attended by over 150 local and regional business and government officials including US Rep. Lois Capps, CA-23; Brian Miller representing US Rep. Elton Gallegly, CA-24; Elizabeth Echols, Regional Administrator of the US Small
Business Administration and Bruce Stenslie, EDC-VC president & CEO. Keynote speaker was Linda Weinman, co-founder of lynda.com.
About PBS Biotech
PBS Biotech, Inc. is a US corporation that manufactures fully scalable and easy to use single-use bioreactors for global biotechnology organizations. The company has patented innovative industrial designs and advanced software driven control systems that produce low shear, cell culture solutions improving operational flexibility and process efficiency, reducing operating costs and accelerating time to market for biotechnology customers. With headquarters in Camarillo, CA. the company is poised for rapid growth to support industry demand for single-use technologies. PBS Biotech is a member of the BioProcess Systems Alliance (BPSA).
Contact: James B. Schultz, VP – Sales & Marketing
+1 805-990-6177
PDF Version
Ventura County’s volatile job market
Ventura County’s volatile job market
Another major employer leaves area, but job market shows signs of life
By Shane Cohn 10/27/
The headlines are fickle, at best. Unemployment is down this month, up last month; the economy is rising, diving, sustaining. But statistics don’t help pay the bills, they just help reporters fill stories and put politicians in office or back on the streets from whence they came.
Trends, on the other hand, are far more tangible. Beginning this past summer, the trend of major Ventura County companies leaving the state and laying off scores of employees in their wake – or significantly reducing their work forces as in the case of Amgen laying off 226 people this past week — has been a black mark for city governments and gut wrenching for those laid off.
It began in June, when Affinity Group, a major employer in the city of Ventura, put its headquarters up for sale, which also equated to massive employee layoffs. According to figures provided by Chief Executive Officer Marcus Lemonis, more than half the workforce was dismissed from the Ventura location. Approximately 70 employees will remain in the accounting, directories and rallies and events departments. The other functions of the company were moved or reassigned to the offices in Denver, Minneapolis and Bowling Green, Ky., according to Lemonis, who declined to comment any further. The former Affinity site off of Vista Del Mar Avenue is now in escrow with Somera Capital Management, a Santa Barbara-based boutique real estate investment firm, according to Nick Gregg, office and industrial specialist with CB Richard Ellis. Gregg, who marketed the building, said the asking price was $9.7 million, but couldn’t disclose the contract price until the deal closes. The site includes a 72,000-square-foot office building on 9.3 acres.
The Affinity Group departure marks the biggest corporation to leave Ventura since Kinko’s moved its corporate headquarters to Texas in 2002.
“You can blame Sacramento, but this is a costly part of the country to do business in,” said Ventura City Manager Rick Cole. “We are not in position to give the kind of incentives that a place in rural Mississippi or suburban Kentucky or Nevada can offer, because of state laws.”
In late August, 186 employees at SolarWorld Industries America in Camarillo were laid off. The largest domestic producer of solar panels announced it would be shifting production to its new facility in Hillsboro, Ore. The sales and marketing functions of the company would remain in Camarillo, about 114 employees.
“Still waiting for the smoke to clear,” said John Fraser, city of Camarillo’s senior management analyst. “It was terrible news for us and worse news for people being laid off.”
But as Camarillo awaited clear skies, two more major employers stormed out of town. Vitesse Semiconductor issued pink slips on Oct. 3 and announced it would shutter one of its Camarillo facilities. The company laid off 10 percent of its 467 employees, though its headquarters will still remain in Camarillo. Channel Microwave, which started in
Camarillo 25 years ago, is going to lay off 36 of its 50 employees and the manufacturing sector is being transferred to Tampa, according to Camarillo’s Sept. 30 Economic Development Report.
All is far from being lost, however, in the economic tides. Fraser said the city is on the verge of welcoming a company that will bring 300 jobs, but could not comment further on the deal. Camarillo is also host to emerging green and biotech businesses like carbon-fuel producer Cool Planet BioFuels and PBS Biotech, creating lines of disposable bioreactors, which began as a startup from a $250,000 loan from the Economic Development Collaborative-Ventura County. The company now has 20 employees.
In Ventura, the strategy, according to Cole, is “to make it easy on existing Ventura businesses to grow and expand, and for entrepreneurs to launch companies.” In January 2010, the city launched an “incubator” to foster and attract high-tech companies to the city. The incubator now houses 17 startups, according to Cole.
“Not all are going to grow up and become Microsoft,” he said. “But these weren’t in existence before we started.” One of the companies in the incubator, The Trade Desk, an online advertising ad exchange, now boasts 15 employees.