Feared lost, Unetixs instead stays in R.I.

STAYING PUT: Neeraj Jha, CEO of Unetixs Vascular, says company owners never had a formal plan to leave Rhode Island. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
STAYING PUT: Neeraj Jha, CEO of Unetixs Vascular, says company owners never had a formal plan to leave Rhode Island. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

In three years, Unetixs Vascular Inc. has gone from another cautionary tale about businesses leaving Rhode Island’s fragile economy to a refreshing example of a firm planning to grow here over the long haul.
When founder Peter Moscovita sold the North Kingstown medical-device manufacturer in mid-2010 in order to retire, he didn’t expect the new owner, Opto Circuits India Ltd., would keep the company in the state.
Opto owns another company in Wisconsin, Criticare, that makes patient-monitoring equipment and during the transition Moscovita believed Unetixs’ operations would be gradually moved there.
“The company will probably stay for about a year and then it will slowly be phased out of Rhode Island, which is the one thing I was fighting for but it didn’t get too far – to try and keep the operation here,” Moscovita told Providence Business News in August 2010, while he was acting as an adviser to the new owners. “Not what I would have liked to see, but Rhode Island, I guess, is too expensive for them to consider staying.”
But apparently Moscovita’s fears about the Ocean State’s competitiveness were exaggerated, as not only has Unetixs stayed in North Kingstown, it celebrated its 25th anniversary there in October at an event with Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee and Director of Health Dr. Michael Fine.
“Throughout the company’s 25 years, not only has Unetixs been at the forefront of innovation but has been creating jobs for Rhode Islanders,” Chafee said in a news release marking the event.
In a recent interview, Unetixs CEO Neeraj Jha said Opto had never gotten to the point of having a plan in place to consolidate operations in Wisconsin or elsewhere.
“There was not an action plan to move,” said Jha, who took the helm at Unetixs about a year ago and was not in Rhode Island for the transition period. “There were a few functions that got moved out, some accounting, but manufacturing remains here and maintaining that was the plan all the time.” Jha said the fact that Opto invested in a number of other projects around the same time, and was evaluating its holdings, probably contributed to the impression it would move Unetixs, but the firm prefers not to shuffle facilities if possible.
“I can’t say exactly what all the discussions were two years back, but there is always a belief for us that any type of movement is detrimental to the company and manufacturing side,” Jha said. “Our manufacturing was here and key people are still here.”
Now that Unetixs has decided to stay in Rhode Island – at a facility on Commerce Park Road in the Quonset Business Park – the company is now focused on trying to grow here.
Jha said Opto became interested in Unetixs because the company occupied a health care niche – digital vascular diagnostic equipment – that the world’s medical-device giants would not infiltrate. They paid $9.7 million for the company.
Specifically, Unetixs’ systems, which include both the hardware to record patient blood flow and software to analyze it, tests at-risk patients for peripheral arterial disease, a hardening of the arteries in limbs. The condition can result in pain and, if untreated, the loss of arms or legs.
“This is a very unique space and it has huge growth potential,” Jha said. “We are working on an everyday basis to reach out to more people. It’s not just in the United States, but in places all over the world they want to have systems that address this but don’t know what is accurate and good quality.”
Right now about 75 percent of Unetixs’ sales come from the United States and Jha expects that to stay relatively constant as the company increases market share in this country while expanding its international presence.
Unetixs is preparing to launch two more diagnostic products in the first quarter of next year and Jha said he expects growth of between 5 and 10 percent and has several openings for new workers he is trying to fill. The company has added at least two workers since Jha took over a year ago and is now at 35 full-time employees. Steven J. King, managing director of the Quonset Development Corporation, said he was resigned to Unetixs leaving in 2010 and is now thankful they stayed.
“They were trying to make a decision of whether to consolidate in Waukesha, [Wisc.],” King said. “I thought they were going to leave, then they changed their mind. A lot of it had to do with the workforce here. We are very excited to have them in the park with high-tech medical manufacturing.”
In addition to traditional marketing and trade missions to other countries, Unetixs is trying to expand the market for its products by putting its systems to work in the community and demonstrating their benefits.
The company is currently working with the R.I. Department of Health to organize free screenings for Rhode Islanders within the at-risk population for peripheral arterial disease, which includes smokers, people over age 50 and people with diabetes.
“It is wonderful to have this kind of sophisticated technology in Rhode Island,” Fine said in a phone interview about Unetixs. “They have a way of doing vascular testing that is very useful to surgeons and cardiologists that is noninvasive.”
In addition to the general benefits of having advanced medical equipment made in Rhode Island, Fine said the fact that Unetixs’ systems include ultrasound technology meshes well with some of the defense-related companies in the area.
“Because we have so much of the Navy presence, we have lots of people who know their way around this ultrasound technology and it is a way to leverage that into a helpful, civilian use,” Fine said. •

No posts to display