US MEDICAL device company Abiomed is to open a new manufacturing facility in Athlone which it said will create 250 jobs over the next 18 months.
The Co Westmeath plant will manufacture Abiomed's Impella 2.5 product for patients suffering acute heart failure.
It will be based at the site of the former Conor Medsystems factory, which closed with the loss of 165 jobs in May 2007.
Abiomed is a Massachusetts-based company that specialises in medical technologies designed to assist or replace the pumping function of the heart.
Chief executive Michael Minogue said that his company had spent more than a year looking for the right place to make a brand new technology. The technology will treat patients who have had heart attacks differently to how they have been treated heretofore. Mr Minogue envisages the Athlone plant as a centre of excellence for the global manufacture of percutaneous micro heart pumps for use in interventional surgery.
"We're two months in and the demand is great. We're seeing a lot of utilisation and so really it's going to be ramping up globally now as we move from the United States to Japan to China. As we grow, so will the facility and we'll bring more jobs into Athlone."
The factors which led to Athlone being chosen were, he said, the great workforce, the area itself, the proximity of Athlone Institute of Technology - of which a number of the company's Irish workforce are graduates - as well local and IDA support.
"A fantastic result for Ireland," is how Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan described the development. Later in the day she opened the walled gardens at Lough Rynn Castle Estate and Hotel in Co Leitrim. Thirty new full-time staff will be hired to work there next year.
