When it comes to government support for medical-device manufacturing, do you ever get the feeling that nations such as Singapore are eating our lunch? During a recent tour of medical firms there, I felt a palatable sense of excitement and innovation in the air, no doubt due to the government’s proactive and aggressive funding of small and medium-size medical manufacturers (firms can come from anywhere across the globe as long as they open a unit in Singapore).

Besides nations such as Malaysia, China, and Viet Nam, Singapore does a lot of business with Australia. So why would a company such as Australian-based Unilife, which manufactures the proprietary Unitract safety syringe, open its new multimillion-dollar global headquarters in York, PA, instead of, say, Singapore?

According to Stephen Allan, Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Unilife initially got regulatory approval to manufacture in China, but the facility there used low-volume semi-automated processes that could not meet the demand for Unitract, its clinical safety syringe. In addition, Unilife focuses on the $1.5-billion/year pre-filled syringe market, the target of which is pharmaceutical manufacturers. It was therefore critical to meet high quality and reliability standards, which necessitated the use of automated assembly systems and advanced robotics, technology best found in the U.S., says Allan. A strategic goal for Unilife was to locate in the U.S., the world’s largest and most mature market for safety medical devices.

“Before selecting York, we researched 17 U.S. cities in 10 states,” says Alan. “We chose Pennsylvania because it has a pro-business environment, skilled workforce, low cost of doing business, low cost of living, and close proximity to transportation and life-science industry clusters such as New Jersey, Philadelphia, Maryland, and New York.”

Allan says the company’s decision hinged on the fact that it had strong ties with local government through Governor Rendell and several government agencies. “Pennsylvania did a good job of keeping us abreast of opportunities for expansion assistance,” he says. “We spoke to government agencies in several states but Pennsylvania’s incentives were the best fit for our needs. In October of last year, Pennsylvania committed to funding us $5.6 million toward the development of our new facility in York and the creation of 241 highly skilled jobs.”

Unilife is now in the process of constructing its 165,000-sq-ft medical-device production facility in York. The first phase involves building several automated assembly lines and office and lab space. This phase is expected to be complete by the end of 2010, providing production capabilities of 400 million syringes/year. The second phase will add 100,000 sq ft and the capability to manufacture 1 billion units/year.

According to Allan, sanofi-aventis, Bridgewater, NJ, the world’s largest purchaser of prefilled syringes, is funding Unilife’s ready-to-fill syringe program, for rights to purchase in certain therapeutic drug classes. “There are more than 2.5 billion prefilled syringes currently used per year and demand is growing 15% annually” he says. “We also just recently received an order from Stason Pharmaceuticals, a U.S.-based pharmaceutical company, for sale of Unitract, our clinical safety syringe, in Taiwan, Japan, and China.”