Tecomet doubles space, plans to add employees

Correction: This article has been corrected to reflect that BI Inc. did not formerly occupy the entire building at 6265 Gunbarrel Ave.

BOULDER — Contract medical-equipment manufacturer Tecomet Inc. has almost doubled its space in Boulder’s Gunbarrel area, with plans to increase employment by almost a quarter by year’s end.

Wilmington, Massachusetts-based Tecomet is vacating 21,711 square feet at 6165 Lookout Road, shifting to 42,500 square at 6265 Gunbarrel Ave. The company expects to take employment from the current 96 to 118 by the end of 2021, said John Malter, general manager of the Tecomet Boulder site.

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“We are expanding to grow our business with our current biggest customer, which is Medtronic, as well as increase our footprint in some of our other medical-device customers out there,” Malter said.

Malter said that the larger space will enable Tecomet Boulder to add 25 machines to its current 62, which include mills, lathes, Swiss turning machines and robotic automation equipment.

The company already has moved all but two of 62 machines into the new space, he said.

“We are wrapping up the equipment move,” Malter said. “We will be completely vacated out of this building at the end of March.”

Tecomet’s parent also provides manufacturing solutions for the aerospace and defense markets, but the Boulder operation focuses exclusively on ISO-certified manufacturing of medical devices.

Products manufactured by Tecomet in Boulder include devices used in minimally invasive elective surgeries such as knee and shoulder scopes. With the COVID-19 pandemic dampening the market for elective surgeries, demand for those manufactured products has suffered.

“It’s actually pretty soft,” Malter said. “The elective-surgery part of the market has kind of slowed down … People have just been dealing with the pain, or dealing with the discomfort.”

Tecomet’s location in Boulder is next door to its biggest customer, Medtronic, which also has operations in Louisville. That location has proved an advantage, with Tecomet able to “have deliveries on their dock within three minutes,” Malter said

“It’s important to have a great relationship with them, and the proximity to our biggest customer is vital,” he added.

Like other companies in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado, Tecomet has had to deal with a chronic shortage of skilled labor — exacerbated by Boulder’s high housing prices.

“For high-end, high-skilled machinist talent, the pool is not very full,” Malter said.

To deal with the crunch, the company is launching a “develop-from-within” program, through which it will train machinists into higher levels, helping a Machinist I move up to Machinist II, a Machinist II move to Machinist III and so on.

“Hiring a candidate at Machinist III takes 90-plus days,” he said. “We can’t have a machine sitting for three months. So our best bet is to thoroughly develop the people who we have and just backfill the lower-skilled, lower-experienced positions and just continue that development cycle.

“We’re just trying to keep the pipeline full of talent,” he said.

Malter said Tecomet also is looking to expand more of the robotic realm, with customers providing designs for robots and Tecomet working with them on determining the best way to manufacture the robots. Tecomet then could manufacture and assemble the components, providing a completed robot that would go directly to a cleanroom and straight to a hospital.

“That is one thing that we are working on, understanding market pricing, understanding the companies out there and their needs so that we can build to fit that model so we can be one of the first suppliers considered by these customers,” he said.

Tecomet’s history in Boulder dates back to 2016, when it acquired Boulder-based Mountainside Medical.

Tecomet’s current location at 6165 Lookout Road is owned by Neidecker LLC, headed by former Mountainside Medical co-founder Pete Neidecker. The property is listed for sale for $3,925,000 by Chad Henry and Drew Weiman of the W.W. Reynolds Cos.

The property at 6265 Gunbarrel Ave. was last purchased by 6265 Gunbarrel Avenue LLC, an entity affiliated with Manchester Capital Management, for $16 million in 2017. The building also houses the corporate headquarters for electronic-monitoring company BI Inc., which leased 78,000 square feet in April 2014.

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