JOINING SCIENTIFIC FORCES NUMOTECH, EX-USSR NUCLEAR FIRM IN MEDICAL VENTURE.

Byline: Brent Hopkins Staff Writer

NORTHRIDGE - A San Fernando Valley company will be the first U.S. firm to conduct business in a Russian city previously closed to foreigners, as part of a $30 million partnership, officials said Wednesday.

Northridge-based Numotech Inc., which makes medical devices used in wound treatment, will participate in the joint venture with Spektr-Conversion LLC, a Russian research and development company.

Numotech president and chief executive officer Robert Felton said the deal offers unprecedented access to Russian nuclear scientists and engineers.

While growing the company business it just might make the world a safer place, he said.

``These are very hard-working people and they want change in their lives,'' said Felton, speaking by cell phone from a Philadelphia trade show where the partnership was announced.

``They had 75 years of a very difficult government - now they want to change by opening themselves to the West,'' he said.

Numotech will soon have the same scientists and engineers who once worked on plans to unleash nuclear war working on how to heal bodies. The partners will jointly design and produce the devices in Sznezhink, a city created by the old Soviet regime for missile design.

Felton said he expected to hire up to 200 Russian workers, complementing them with another 300 employees in America to handle final assembly of pillows and air chambers used to treat burns, gunshots and other injuries.

Albuquerque, N.M.-based Sandia National Laboratories, which also once designed nuclear delivery systems before shifting its technologies to work in the private sector, helped broker the deal.

Sandia officials had worked with both facilities in the past and suggested their company's Russian counterpart would be well suited to help Numotech miniaturize its components.

``The thought was that this would provide gainful employment for nuclear scientists,'' said Neal Singer, a Sandia spokesman, ``rather than having them take the bus down to see Saddam Hussein or Iran, or other countries where unhappy weapons scientists could go.''

Western companies were unable to access the so-called ``closed cities'' in the past, leaving Russian scientists with little to do in the post-Cold War economy in their country.

Numotech sought them out, lured by the scientists' sophisticated training and low labor costs.

Felton said that while an American physicist commands a salary of up to $100,000 annually, the Russian counterpart makes a mere $2,400 per year.

To facilitate the deal, the government-backed Overseas Private Investment Corp. will provide a $10 million loan. American officials hope the joint venture will lay the groundwork for more investment abroad.

``This significant partnership gives us a blueprint for future collaboration between U.S. companies and the talented scientists in the former Soviet Union,'' Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement to the Associated Press.

Numotech and Spektr will use the money, with additional backing from investment bank M.R. Beal & Co., to construct a 100,000-square-foot research facility.

The low labor costs will make manufacturing 70 percent less expensive but the company won't have to reduce its current payroll of 75 workers, Felton said.

He figured Numotech would see revenue growth of up to 50 percent beyond its current $1 million in annual sales within two years, setting it up for an initial public offering in several years.

``They have over 10,000 employees in that city and only enough work for half of them,'' Felton said. ``It gives a great opportunity for companies like Spektr to retrain them into productive, skilled people in the corporate environment.''

Brent Hopkins, [phone]

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) A new Russian-American venture focuses on medical innovations like this wheelchair whose moving cushions alleviate pressure sores.

(2) Former nuclear scientists in Russia are in a joint venture with Northridge-based Numotech Inc. to make remedial products for the elderly, paraplegics, diabetics and victims of burns and abrasions.

Photos courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories