Mahwah lands high-tech dental center

Mahwah lands high-tech dental center
Apr. 03, 2005
PRASHANT GOPAL
CentreDaily.com
MAHWAH, N.J. - The township of Mahwah is becoming a magnet for dentists.
At Nobel Biocare's new high-tech dental crown manufacturing and training center off Route 17, the company plans to train tens of thousands of dentists and lab technicians a year. It also will produce about a million custom-made caps annually.
The Swedish company, which is a leading manufacturer of dental implants, bridges and ceramic crowns, late last year began leasing about 45,000 square feet in the building, which once housed Aiwa America.
The new site, which has about 40 employees, replaced the company's 6,000-square-foot manufacturing center in Fair Lawn. The company produces crowns in New Jersey and implants in Yorba Linda, Calif.
Nobel Biocare says it spent millions of dollars to upgrade the Mahwah center and install robots that individually craft the crowns. It has about 1,430 employees worldwide and revenues of $482 million last year. While few manufacturers are investing in New Jersey, Nobel said there are several reasons for its expansion.
"We needed more space to place our new equipment and our production line. We needed more space to create our training rooms," said Andy Czajkowski, plant service manager.
"And we wanted a real presence on the East Coast from a sales perspective," added Jerry Vogel, director of eastern area sales. "This provides a reasonable distance and the opportunity to offer clinicians of all sorts to be trained in all aspects of dentistry."
The company previously rented space for training in hotels or sent trainees to its California facility.
Nobel sells its products to dentists and wants to make sure they are up-to-date on implant procedures. It also trains lab technicians on everything from scanning tooth impressions to attaching porcelain to the crowns. It hopes to bring about 80,000 people a year to Mahwah for one- or two-day courses.
Whenever possible, the company also will likely make space available to local dentists, Vogel said. The building has large classrooms, including one room with 40 stations, each equipped with a monitor and working drill.
William Adamo, director of sales and marketing for the Sheraton Crossroads on Route 17 North in Mahwah, said the hotel expects Nobel Biocare to be one of its top accounts. The company's trainees spent about 250 nights in the hotel in March, he said. "If that's a good indication of what they expect to do, I think that will be great," Adamo said.
The company creates its Procera crowns using a highly automated process.
Around the clock, lab technicians from around North and South America e-mail orders with digital information about patients' teeth.
The mostly robotic production process starts immediately. After a few hours, the crowns are sent by courier to the dental lab that ordered it.
The company says the lab can receive the crown within 24 hours of the order.