Susie Perlman, director of customer relations with Synergy Health, conducts a tour at the expanded facility in the Victory Road Business Park in Clinton Township.

Synergy Health recently celebrated the completion of a multimillion dollar expansion to its electron beam sterilization facility in the Victory Road Business Park in Clinton Township.

The company welcomed business officials and customers to the plant, which doubled in both size and capacity.

The project added a second electron beam system and 25,000 square feet. It wrapped up this spring after about a year of construction and installation work.

Electron beam, or e-beam, processing is used in the health care industry to sterilize single-use medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, biologic tissue and other devices.

However, because it is an efficient and standardized process, the technology also can be used to control contamination in packaging, cosmetics, toiletries and more.

Synergy Health is a United Kingdom-based corporation that provides services to the health care industry and employs about 5,000 people worldwide.

As a result of the expansion of the Victory Road facility, it now employs about 30 in Butler County, up from less than 20, according to Susie Perlman, director of customer relations.

She said the facility operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Perlman, who provided tours, said the facility, which opened in October 2010, was built with expansion in mind.

At that time, a company called BeamOne opened the facility, with a Medrad medical device production facility next door. Medrad was BeamOne’s anchor customer.

Synergy Health acquired BeamOne in 2011, and Bayer HealthCare acquired Medrad in 2013, but the interaction between the two has not changed.

However, because the expansion doubles the plant’s capacity, Perlman said Synergy Health will be able to offer services to many other companies throughout the region.

The e-beam processing works by loading already-packaged supplies onto carts on a floor-mounted motorized rail system that leads into a concrete bunker that houses the electron beam. The bunker ensures radiation emitted during the process is contained.

The carts travel past the beam, which rapidly sterilizes the material by sending high-energy electrons at nearly the speed of light through it.

The “recipe” — beam strength, beam shape, speed, etc. — is changed depending on the size and type of material being sterilized.

The radiation dissipates as the rail system carries the material away from the beam and out of the bunker, and after resting briefly, the products are ready to be shipped.