EX-IM BANK FINANCING HELPS CALIFORNIA COMPANY WIN $2 MILLION SALE OF MEDICAL IMAGING EQUIPMENT TO ISTANBUL HOSPITAL
Medium-term financing from the Export-Import Bank of the United States is helping Imatron Inc., a South San Francisco, CA, small business, sell $2 million of medical imaging equipment, software and services to outfit a new medical clinic in Istanbul, Turkey. Metron Saglik Hizmetleri A.S. will use the equipment to operate a full service imaging center for orthopedic, cardiology, pulmonary, and thoracic diagnostics. Ex-Im Bank's medium-term guarantee is backing a loan from Webster Bank, Hartford, CT.
Gary Baxter, Imatron's vice president for international sales, said: Without Ex-Im Bank, the sale would have been more difficult and taken longer. Ex-Im Bank assures that the sale is indeed going to go through. We're looking forward and betting our future growth on international sales and we will look to Ex-Im Bank to help make it happen.
More business means more jobs at Imatron's San Francisco manufacturing facility. We have hired over 100 people in the last 2 years due to increased sales, said Baxter. The product is capital intensive and each sale supports 3 or 4 manufacturing jobs per machine and up to 7 employees per machine.
Imatron designs, manufactures and markets the Electron Beam Tomography Scanner, used for general purpose computed tomography scanning and, through its patented high-speed electron beam technology, for early stage identification of sub-clinical cardiac and pulmonary disease.
Ex-Im Bank is an independent U.S. government agency that helps finance the sale of U.S. exports primarily to emerging markets throughout the world, by providing loans, guarantees, and insurance. Ex-Im Bank supported $15.5 billion in U.S. exports in fiscal year 2000.