West Enterprise Case Studies

Managing Director John O’Dea, who co-founded the company has an established track record in developing cutting-edge medical devices and previously worked with multinational companies in Galway in the same field.

When John was deciding where to locate Crospon, there was nowhere better than Galway City. ‘As a medical device start-up, there is a huge pool of readily available expertise in the region who have been trained by some of the best multinationals in the medical device business.  Eight of the top ten medical device companies in the world have facilities in Ireland, with the majority on the west coast’ John explains.

Qualified and experienced staff are critical to Crospon and the company employs 16 people at it’s facility in Dangan.  The majority of staff are engineering graduates but business skills are also important and the team includes staff with qualifications in this area.  To date, recruitment of staff has not been a problem for Crospon and 75% of their workers live within 5 miles of the facility, with others commuting from Clare and Mayo.  Galway is well served with lots of amenities and leisure activities, with more time available to enjoy them.

John, who is originally from Dublin, has seen considerable advances in Research and Development led industries and this has had a knock on effect for others as John explains. 'Services available to R&D companies have greatly increased in recent years, particularly in relation to specialised test laboratories.  There is an ever increasing cluster of medical device start-ups in the Galway region in particular.  Networks such as the Irish Medical Devices Association provide an ideal forum to meet’.

Infrastructure in the city is not a major issue for Crospon, though John would like to see additional flights and runway capacity at Galway Airport.  Road access to the city needs to be further improved from both Limerick and Galway and he feels that the ring road around the city is ‘an urgent requirement’.

Crospon has received considerable support from the Western Development Commission Investment Fund and from Enterprise Ireland and together John believes they make the region particularly attractive for technology start-ups.  Early stage discussions are also underway with NUI Galway and others about Innovation Partnerships in relation to some other Crospon products which are in the early stages of design.

For now though, Crospon is concentrating on a device to help assist with the diagnosis of chronic heartburn which was released in 2009.  Crospon is looking forward to considerable growth in the years ahead.