MEDRAD Inc., a worldwide leading provider of medical devices and services that enhance imaging procedures of the human body, recently celebrated the grand opening of its new disposables manufacturing facility in Butler County with 150 guests, including Gov. Ed Rendell.

The facility is on the former site of a U.S. Steel sintering plant in Victory Road Business Park in Clinton Township.

Production started at full-speed during the first week of December and is now a three-shift operation. At the heart of the facility is an extensive clean room environment in which workers manufacture disposable components used to inject contrast dyes during medical imaging procedures.

The 120,000-square-foot facility is anticipated to create a hundred new jobs over the next several years, making it one of the largest single sources of new jobs in the county and one of the largest single sources of new manufacturing jobs in Western Pennsylvania.

MEDRAD employs 1,700 in 16 countries, with 1,200 employees at its four facilities in the Pittsburgh region.

After a worldwide search, the 44-year old company stayed in the region for a number of reasons, including:

• a desire to expand the workforce in Southwestern Pennsylvania

• proximity to other MEDRAD locations, which will help it preserve and leverage the MEDRAD culture

• proximity to a majority of MEDRAD's customer and supplier base

• a 20-acre site that has room for growth and could be prepared quickly, meeting the timetable for expected customer demand.

The Victory Road Business Park is also part of a Keystone Opportunity Zone, which the state has developed to encourage businesses to invest in Pennsylvania.

"The Saxonburg facility went from groundbreaking to start-up in just 10 months, and is critical to meeting the demand for imaging procedures that enable earlier, more accurate diagnosis and improved treatment," said president and CEO John P. Friel. "It provides us with needed additional plant capacity in the short term, and its phased growth design gives us the capacity to add production lines in the future."

The building also is designed to be LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, certified. That certification requires a building meet stringent measures and tests of its energy efficiency and environmentally friendly construction through use of natural lighting, biodegradable materials and construction practices that reduce human impact on the site.

The new facility also received the 2007 Conservationist of the Year award from the Butler County Conservation District board. The award is given to a new developer or construction project in the county that does an exceptional job with land and water management.