Germany-based Raumedic AG announced that it has appointed William F. Gearhart as CEO at its U.S. operations. He will be responsible for developing the Raumedic brand in North America.

“After a thorough search, we concluded that Bill’s leadership and experience in the medical engineering industry, along with his considerable track record of success in the start-up, growth and leadership of high-performance medical device companies made him the ideal candidate for the role,” said Raumedic Group CEO Martin Bayer. “We entirely trust his competence and will give him all the assistance he needs to write the next chapter of Raumedic’s success story.”

Gearhart has held numerous leadership roles throughout his career, including VP of sales and marketing at Dune Medical Devices, senior VP of sales and marketing at ImpediMed, VP of sales and marketing at Boston Scientific, division VP at Pfizer and director of marketing at Medtronic.

Raumedic’s U.S. headquarters is located in Mills River, N.C. and has a full-service development and production center for polymer components and systems. Raumedic created clean room facilities, polymer extrusion lines, molding and assembly facilities in Mills River in 2016.

“We are committed to meet customer demands in the most professional way possible and thus strongly rely on the human factor,” said Gearhart. “While we started with a very competent workforce of over 50 people who were already on-site, we want to double the number of our employees in the years to come. Out specialists’ profound know-how in processing all popular medical grade thermoplastics and high temperature polymers and their ability to fulfill even very exceptional requirements enable us to pursue our expansion strategy.”

After investing more than $11 million in its Mills River, N.C. facility, Raumedic expects total investments of the facility to reach $27 million by 2022.

“Those significant investments underline our strong will to provide high-quality components and systems not only for the North American market but for the medical and pharmaceutical industries worldwide,” said Bayer. “Having put into action our brand new U.S. production facility under Bill’s strong leadership, our partners benefit from a more flexible availability of their desired products. This way we enhance our customers’ competitiveness, no matter where they are in the world.”

[Want to stay more on top of MDO content? Subscribe to our weekly e-newsletter.]