Someone in southwest Ireland must have found a four-leaf clover, because the city of Cork has once again become a lucky recipient of Stryker’s job-creating intentions.
The devicemaker and Irish city celebrated the official opening of a new additive manufacturing facility there on Wednesday, according to Ireland’s Industrial Development Agency.
The new facility measures in at 156,000 square feet. It’s located in the townland of Anngrove within Cork, where Stryker already boasts a 100,000-square-foot facility for additive manufacturing—also known as 3D printing.
Neither the national agency nor Stryker itself disclosed the cost of the new manufacturing site, but the IDA noted that it constituted “significant investments” in the Anngrove area. With the facility now open, Stryker is ultimately expected to create as many as 600 new high-tech jobs in the region.
“Stryker has been innovating in additive manufacturing within the medtech industry for more than 20 years and opened its Anngrove facility in 2016. The expanded facility furthers the company’s four-decade commitment to Ireland and recognizes the strong ecosystem of universities, engineering talent and partners such as the IDA,” said Martin Shanahan, CEO of the agency.
Stryker’s 3D printing work centers around the creation of devices and implants used in orthopedic surgeries, including knee, hip, shoulder, ankle, craniomaxillofacial and spine procedures.
The company’s original facility in Anngrove, in fact, houses the worldwide headquarters of its AMagine Institute, where Stryker conducts the research, development and commercial launch of additive manufacturing technologies.
Beyond its Anngrove presence, Stryker has established four other outposts in Cork—two of which date back to 1998, including the company’s first on the Emerald Isle—plus another in Limerick and in the Northern Ireland capital of Belfast. In total, Stryker is estimated to have brought at least 3,500 jobs to Ireland in its two decades there.
As recently as 2019, Stryker poured more than 200 million euros (currently about $203 million) into three of its five Cork facilities, with an aim of building out its research, development and innovation work there. The investment was meant to support the AMagine Institute, as well as the company’s neurovascular business in the region and its Instruments Innovation Centre, which designs new surgical devices.