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Carestream to add 70 jobs in Rochester

carestream.com

  

Carestream, a Rochester based imaging company, plans to add dozens of jobs over the next five years.

Carestream was spun off from Kodak years ago and provides medical imaging systems and products related to non-destructive testing.

The company plans to create up to 70 jobs over the next five years at a facility it operates at the Eastman Business Park.

The expansion is related to the manufacturing of film used in radiology, for medical and dental practices. Many practices in the U.S. now use digital imaging products, which Carestream also manufactures, but Andy Matthews, senior vice president of operations, said that film is still quite prevalent for medical imaging in some markets outside the U.S.

“Our film markets that we have highest volume in are in developing markets like China and the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America,” Matthews said.

He noted that Carestream is closing a plant in the U.S. and another in Mexico and bringing those operations to Rochester.

"This is kind of like one of the last consolidations that we’ll do, so we’re expecting to have a presence in Rochester for quite some time to come, even from a films perspective," Matthews said.

As Carestream looks to fill these positions, Matthews is hoping that they may be able find former Kodak employees still living in the region who may want to join the expanded work at Carestream.

“I hope that there are some people who used to be at Kodak who say, you know, I’m not ready to retire yet and I’d like to give this a go for a while. It’s very similar work to what people used to do here.” Matthews said the work that is done in Rochester involves film finishing, basically getting the film packaged and ready for shipment.

This is a $3 million expansion project. Empire State Development is providing up to $700,000 in Excelsior Tax Credits in exchange for the job creation commitment. Monroe County, the City of Rochester and Greater Rochester Enterprise are also assisting with the project. 

Randy Gorbman is WXXI's director of news and public affairs. Randy manages the day-to-day operations of WXXI News on radio, television, and online.