(This article by Bob Audette was published in the Brattleboro Reformer on April 28, 2017.)
[B]ELLOWS FALLS — A medical products maker that employs 85 people will be closing its doors and shipping all its jobs to Buffalo, New York, in the near future.
According to Rich Kalich, the former chairman and CEO of Vermed, he was informed by Graphic Controls, which bought Vermed in March 2015, that the company plans to move the operation to Buffalo.
“I received a call last Wednesday from their CFO advising me they would not be renewing their lease on the building at 9 Lovell Drive in Bellows Falls,” Kalich told the Reformer. “They called me because I am the primary representative of the previous owners of the company.”
When Graphic Controls bought Vermed, it negotiated a lease with the previous owners for the facility on Lovell Drive, said Kalich.
“Our partnership, Medical Device Properties, or MDP, owns the building and the grounds and Graphic Controls leased it from us for the operation,” he said. “By the terms of the lease, they were to give us at least six months advance notice of their intentions to either renew or terminate the lease.”
Kalich said Graphic Controls negotiated a three-year lease when it purchased Vermed, a lease that is due to expire in January 2018. Kalich said he had no other information on the closure of Vermed, including when the facility would cease operations.
The Eagle Times in Claremont, New Hampshire, originally reported Wednesday that sources had informed the paper Vermed “would be closing ‘some time in the fall’” and leaving the town of Rockingham.
Kalich told the Reformer that “an advisement” was issued to the employees about the closure.
The Reformer has been unsuccessful in contacting Graphic Controls in Buffalo or at Vermed in Bellows Falls.
According to the Eagle Times, its source said employees were asked not to talk to the media.
Rockingham and Bellows Falls officials were unaware of the closure until they read about it in the Eagle Times. State officials and the local economic development agencies were also unaware of the decision until the news came out yesterday.
Shortly after Vermed was sold, Graphic Controls was awarded a Vermont Economic Growth Incentive award of $506,750. However, state officials told the Reformer that the VEGI award had not been utilized by Vermed.
But a $200,000 grant issued from the Windham County Economic Development Program to promote continued growth of new jobs was awarded and used by Vermed. The WCEDP is funded by $10 million given to the state by Entergy when it announced the closure of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon.
The program is intended to offset the economic and employment losses of the closure of the plant.
Because it was a grant, noted the state official, there is no way for it to be returned.
Vermed was founded in 1978 and sold to Cardio-Dynamics International Corp. for $17.3 million in 2004, but almost immediately, noted Vermont Business Magazine, began to lose money.
In an effort to keep the company operational, Kalich and 10 managers of Vermed, supported by the town of Rockingham, the Vermont Economic Development Authority and Citizens National Bank, gathered their savings, remortgaged their homes, cashed out their 401Ks, and joined together to form Vermont Medical Partners Inc., buying the company for $8.2 million, according to VBM.
Graphic Controls, with 600 employees and $120 million in revenues, previously was owned by Tyco, but in 2010 was acquired by Boston-based investment firm WestView Partners, according to buffalonews.com.
