Above: Puerto Rico (CJ Photo)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Medical firm Aspen Surgical will be expanding operations in Puerto Rico, Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced.

The company, which is the surgical division of the Hill-Rom company, will be investing $3.1 million ton improve manufacturing systems at its plant at Las Piedras, and will be adding 30 new jobs and retaining 200.

Aspen Surgical is a leader in the production of scalpels and other medical instruments.

At its Las Piedras plant, it manufactures around 110 million surgical knives each year for different producers ranging from general to specialized microsurgery.

The investment will help the company add new product lines and improve the competitiveness of the plant, the government said.

“This investment will create jobs and this is not an isolated incident,” Padilla said. “This is just the latest of more than a dozen manufacturing expansions that have occurred over the first 16 months of my administration.”

Padilla said those expansions had totaled more than $615 million in investment in Puerto Rico.