US Endoscopy eyes $4.7M expansion, job-creation incentives

US Endoscopy‘s chief operating officer hopes city and state economic development programs will help his company to keep innovating.

The Mentor, Ohio, company makes endoscopic products aimed at unmet needs in the burgeoning market for minimally invasive surgical procedures of the digestive system. It offers about 140 products — many of them accessories that enable diagnosis or therapy — and usually introduces several new products and accessories a year.

Now, US Endoscopy wants to do a $4.7 million expansion so it can design, make and sell even more endoscopic products. Of course, the medical device maker that employs 330 would have to hire more people to expand — 150 in the next four years, according to Tony Siracusa, chief operating officer for US Endoscopy.

So the company has applied for a $1 million Ohio Third Frontier grant to push some of its gastrointestinal products into urology and cystology procedures. That expansion “will involve significant research and development, product testing, regulatory approvals and certifications,” the company said in its letter of intent (pdf) for the grant. “Significant job growth would creation at the company’s headquarters and manufacturing facility would occur at the end of the Third Frontier project.”

US Endoscopy also is looking for a Mentor Incentive grant from the Mentor Department of Economic & Community Development to support the job growth, Siracusa said. That grant request will be taken up by Mentor City Council during their meeting on Tuesday.

The company would like to create its production technician, engineering and product manager jobs in Mentor, first, and in Ohio, second, Siracusa said. “In this field of medical devices, most of our competitors do a lot of work with low-cost countries,” he said. With the help of the incentives, U.S. Endoscopy could create the jobs in the United States.

The company also would like to continue growing. “We’re resource-constrained. We can only process so many ideas at one time,” he said. The grants “would help us accelerate the launch of these products, which in turn, would accelerate the hiring that we would need to support that.”