So banal that most people barely notice it or give it a second thought yet so absolutely crucial to saving lives.
We’re talking about medical tubing, the plastic tubes of various looks that connect
life-saving medical devices and machines to patients.
Without that specialized tubing, the devices worth thousands or millions of dollars, are worthless.
It is that tubing that GlobalMed Inc. has been making in Trenton’s Northeast Industrial Park for 20 years.
Friday Bay of Quinte riding MPP and Minister of Energy Todd Smith announced a grant of $1,030,000.00 for
GlobalMed from the provincial government’s Ontario Together Fund (OTF).
GlobalMed itself is investing over $2.2 million on top of that.
Vice-President and General Manager of GlobalMed Al Flieler said the over $3 million investment will help modernize technology, develop new products, and improve quality control at the plant.
“We want to grow, to develop new and better products, and expand our markets. Thank you for this money. It’s going to help us get to where we want and where we need to go much more quickly.”
GlobalMed employs 292 people now and the investment will lead to an estimated 15 new jobs.
GlobalMed Vice-President and GM Al Flieler (left) shows MPP Todd Smith one of the company’s latest medical tubing products. (Photo: Quinte News)
In his remarks in the foyer of GlobalMed MPP Smith was upbeat about the future of manufacturing, locally and province-wide.
“When I was Minister of Economic Development in 2018 we set out to eliminate red tape, about 25% of it. Industry saw the province as being too high cost, uncompetitive. In 2018 the big auto companies told me to my face we were a very uncompetitive region. Well we’ve cut the costs of doing business in Ontario by $7 billion and industry is noticing. In the last six weeks alone the big auto companies have announced investments of $12 billion in the province. GM is going to build electric vehicles in Oshawa, a place that at one time we feared could lose the business entirely.”
“These are exciting times in Ontario.”
Smith also hinted that good economic announcements would be coming in the not too distant future for the Quinte region.
