Medical device contract manufacturing and sterilization company Centerpiece announced this week that it plans to open an ethylene oxide (EtO) sterilization plant in Tijuana, Mexico, in early 2021.

The facility will add both high- and low-volume processing to a region that employs more than 70,000 people in the medical device industry. The 140,000 ft2 plant is equipped with six Getinge low-temperature sterilizers and state-of-the-art emissions control equipment, according to the Solana Beach, Calif.-based company. Its sterilization chamber configuration also uses chamber-specific preconditioning and aeration cells, moving product throughout the process via auto-pallet transfer systems.

Centerpiece’s manufacturing operation is in Rosarito, Mexico, 10 miles south of the U.S. border, focusing on class 2 device production and sterile-barrier packaging along with in-house sterilization processing.

“Too often, tier II & III medical devices are consumed by managing their supply chains and/or facing sterilization capacity threats,” Centerpiece CEO Matt Jordan told Medical Design & Outsourcing in an email. “For the businesses that we also manufacture for, they are guaranteed EtO sterilization capacity. We want our customers to focus on R&D and innovation, sales, customer distribution, market penetration, etc., not managing production, sterilization and warehousing.”

Centerpiece may expand its contract manufacturing division into the Tijuana facility in 2022 or 2023, eventually employing several hundred workers. For now, the sterilization operation will employ about 50, with about half of the devices to be sterilized coming from within Mexico and the rest from the U.S., Jordan said.

“Tijuana is the leading medical device manufacturing hub in North America and is a strategic production center for U.S. markets,” Jordan said in a news release. “Our downstream investment into ethylene-oxide processing will streamline supply chains and provide much-needed sterilization capacity for a wide array of product portfolios.”