STUTTGART, Germany – MedTec Germany, the medical device manufacturing show held here each year, grew by 20% for exposition space, and event organizer Canon Communications (Los Angeles) says it plans to add a third exhibition hall for next year’s show at the new Stuttgart Landemesse to accommodate pre-bookings by exhibitors.

Weidmann Plastics Technology (Rapperswil, Switzerland/Auburn, Alabama) used the conference venue as an opportunity to report a new partnership with Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore, California) for the design, protoyping and mass production of disposable microfluidic devices for diagnostic and pharmaceutical applications.

The two companies will coordinate customer-specified research and product development aimed at lab-on-chip applications of what Weidmann called Sandia’s substantial intellectual property.

“Sandia is looking to license its technology out to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and while they have the skills for design and prototyping internally, Weidmann brings an ability to replicate micro- and nano-structures on a mass production scale with in-line quality controls, assembly and packaging,” Kurt Eggmann, director for project management, told Medical Device Daily.

One of the compelling technologies from Weidmann that fit the project ambitions of Sandia is microfilter membranes for micron-level processing of microfluidics.

A joint design team meeting is scheduled for later in March, Eggmann told MDD, with three specific projects on the table. He added that more than one OEM has indicated an interest in these projects.

Following on the agreement with Sandia, Weidmann said that it is doubling clean room capacity in Switzerland from the current 80,000 square feet to 160,000 square feet.

In other announcements at MedTec Germany:

• Medifiq Healthcare (Vantaa, Finland) said it entered into an agreement to acquire Medisize Medical, a division of Medisize Holding (Wattwil, Switzerland), for SEK 610 million ($101 million).

Net sales of the combined companies will total €103 million ($159 million) and the workforce will top 1,000 people.

“We now have a much wider footprint and presence on global markets,” said Medifiq Healthcare’s Chairman Lauri Ratia.

Medifiq operates manufacturing facilities in Finland and the United Kingdom and works in partnership with a Chinese manufacturer. Medifiq also reported at MedTec that it opened a facility in Stuttgart in January.

Medisize Medical specializes in engineering and contract manufacturing of airway management devices such as adapters, inhaler apparatus, infuser, array tubes, filters and humidifiers, as well as flexible medical bags and bottles for pharmaceutical packaging.

Medisize production facilities are located in N rensdorf, Switzerland; Hillegom, the Netherlands; Letterkenny, Ireland; and Trhové Sviny, Czech Republic.

The company’s 2007 sales were reported to be 102 million Swiss francs (CHF), or $101.6 million, with an operating profit of CHF 9.96 million ($9.94 million).

A separate division, Coltène/Whaledent Dental Group (Altst tten, Switzerland), develops and manufactures adhesives, restoratives, endodontics, prosthetics and rotary instruments with production sites located in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio; R thi, Switzerland; and Langenau, Germany.

The dental division accounted for 20% of total sales at Medisize and grew by more than of 20% in 2007.

In November 2006, Medifiq Healthcare was spun out from the Finnish telecommunication business Perlos (Vantaa, Finland), where it operated for 30 years as a division specializing in design, tooling and manufacturing services for healthcare and pharmaceutical companies producing products that include medical devices, drug delivery systems and personal care products.

The main shareholder in Medifiq is the Swedish equity investor Ratos (Stockholm Sweden), which prior to the acquisition of Medisize held a 78.5% share while Perlos held onto a 20% interest.

In conjunction with the acquisition, Ratos invested SEK 385 million ($63 million) to increase its stake to 92%.

• To help German companies wrestle with increasing product complexity, the Manufacturing Engineering and Automation group of the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart unveiled what it called “a Lego system for production facilities.”

“We have developed a kind of playground for testing different production techniques that allows designers to experiment with ones that are most suitable for the problem at hand,” said team leader Andreas Traube in reporting on details of the new system.

The Modular Process Automation Laboratory (m:pal) is made up of autonomous modules, identically-sized cubes containing different processes, such as pumps, incubators, dosing devices or camera modules. The cubes are slotted together on a mini-assembly line and begin working together immediately to test a process, much like assembling Lego blocks.

It takes a lot of patience and money to scale up analytical or therapeutic processes from the laboratory to industrial manufacture, Traube said.

Needing answers are questions such as where and which pumps and dosing systems should be located in order to produce and analyze a biochip, he said.

Today, engineers draw together the needed components, but then when it comes to a test run things don’t work as expected, so the planning process starts all over again, which is expensive, he said.

The m:pal platform offers a proving ground to continually tinker with different processes until a product developer can verify the combination that works.

“This makes it possible to save up to 50% of the costs,” Traube said.