Contact lens producer offers sight solutions

In 1973, Jim Webb started Metro Optics, a contact lens manufacturer that made rigid lenses out of the only available material at the time, poly methyl methacrylate, or acrylic glass.

Today, 40 years later, contact lenses can be made in a variety of styles, out of different materials and by primarily automated processes. Jim's company, which was originally formed in Dallas and had five locations in Texas and Oklahoma, has been condensed into one location in Pflugerville, and is located on Vision Drive.

Jim's son Steve is president of Metro Optics, which produces approximately 400,000 lenses every year for doctors throughout the nation. The business specializes in creating contacts for hard-to-fit prescriptions, and eye professionals can order customized lenses that are not usually stocked by larger lens companies. Although Metro Optics is not typically involved in one-on-one consultations with patients, if a doctor has a hard time fitting lenses, a patient can be custom fitted at Metro Optics' location.

"Everything is made to prescription, just like a custom-made pair of glasses would be," Steve said. "Your big-box manufacturers ... service the standard, easy-to-fit prescriptions, because that's where most people fall. Outside of that range, where people need higher prescriptions, or they have some kind of corneal irregularity where they can't wear standard lenses, that's what we make."

Metro Optics makes hard and soft lenses, and all of its lenses are made on-site. Each contact starts as a disk of a hard, silicone-like substance that is ground and shaped by machines into the right prescription. Every lens is hand-inspected and rejected if any defects are found. If the contact is intended to be a soft lens, the lens then goes through hydration for softening.

On average, a pair of hard contacts takes approximately one day to make, though in a pinch, Metro Optics' staff can have a pair done in 20 minutes. Soft lenses take longer and are typically produced in two to three days.

"[Making contacts] has become a lot more automated," Steve said. "Computer manufacturing systems have really made a difference in how we make lenses. Everything was all manual before, [and] you had to cut one curve at a time. With these new machines, we're able to cut multiple things at one time, and an operation that used to take five people is now done by one machine."

The company just finished a remodel, but is growing so quickly that it will need to expand its operating space in the near future. Steve said Metro Optics is looking to build a second manufacturing facility in Georgetown in the future.

"We've just about outgrown this facility, and to meet our new contract, we will need to develop a separate manufacturing facility," Steve said. "We'll be manufacturing in two locations, and that's [also] for disaster recovery. If we have a catastrophic event at one of our facilities, it won't take down our business completely."

15802 Vision Drive, Pflugerville, 512-251-2382, www.metro-optics.com, Twitter: @MetroOptics