Floral City, Fla., Medical Supply Company to Move to Hernando County Airport

Oct. 20, 2004

A Floral City company is moving south, relocating its U.S. headquarters at the Hernando County Airport.

S&W Healthcare Corp., a 12-year-old company that markets and distributes cardiology supplies, plans to move into a 25,500-square-foot building in the Airport Industrial Park in mid November.

S&W Healthcare's plant in Austria makes ECG and EKG electrodes, the sticky round objects that nurses attach to cardiology patients' chests to check how the heart is pumping. The company sells the electrodes and recording chart paper in the United States, Canada, South America and the Caribbean.

S&W Healthcare is the fourth-largest manufacturer of electrodes in Europe, said vice president of operations Bill Nelligar.

The company will move into a building formerly occupied by Polyethics Recycling Industries.

The Canadian company that manufactures plastic bags sold the building to S&W Healthcare because it had more space than the company needed, said Mike McHugh, director of Hernando County's Office of Business Development. Polyethics will continue operating at the industrial park in space it will lease from S&W Healthcare, which will use the site for office space and warehousing, McHugh said.

Nelligar said S&W executives decided to move to Hernando County because the area appears to be thriving. "It's centrally located, with easy access to Tampa and Orlando," Nelligar said. "It seems, strategically, a perfect location."

The company started in Clearwater but moved to Floral City six years ago when the owner bought a 100-acre ranch in Citrus County, Nelligar said.

S&W Healthcare has 32 employees; 20 of them are housed at the company headquarters. By the end of 2005, the company plans to add 10 positions at its new Hernando headquarters.

Staff writer Andrew Skerritt contributed to this report.