Success Stories in Biotech field

UltiMed, a manufacturer of diabetic supplies, has been doing business in South Dakota since 2001. In those eight years, the company has expanded twice – once within the first couple years, and financing has been recently approved through the Governor’s Office of Economic Development for the second.

Since expanding UltiMed’s presence in South Dakota, sales have increased six-fold, according to Tom Erickson, CEO.  This success is what has prompted the company’s second expansion, which will increase the building size by 50 percent to provide additional space for equipment and storage to compensate for increased volume.

Erickson says that growing a presence in South Dakota has a fairly smooth process due, in part, to the help of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. “With the GOED’s ‘can-do’ attitude, they handle just about anything that comes their way. We speak in very high accolades about the staff,” Erickson concluded.

Empi, a medical device manufacturing company that makes medical products for physical rehabilitation, has had a presence in South Dakota for 23 years. At the time of its inception, there were 10 employees working at the Clear Lake facility. Today, there are 181.

Marlin Bjerke, Vice President of Manufacturing, attributes that success to the quality of South Dakota’s workforce. “In Clear Lake, we have skilled engineers that were able to build us automation systems in-house,” Bjerke said.

“If you take a look at our organization, you will see that most of the employees at Clear Lake were born and raised in South Dakota. That, combined with the overall economic business climate, is favorable to manufacturing companies such as ours,” Bjerke concluded.