Thermo Fisher Scientific cut the ribbon to open a highly automated manufacturing plant in North Carolina—featuring a 375,000-square-foot facility capable of producing more than 40 million pipette tips per week.
The site in Mebane, about halfway between Durham and Greensboro, can churn out 96 tips every 12 seconds, as well as 5,000 finished assemblies every hour, the company said. It also employs automated hardware for packaging and shipping.
Thermo Fisher describes it as a new manufacturing center of excellence, joining its 13 locations and about 7,800 employees across the state. It’s expected to provide about 100 jobs total, across production, engineering and business operations, with about 40 people already hired.
“As a global leader in life sciences manufacturing, we’re proud to serve as a growth engine for the American economy and provide our customers with a strong and agile supply chain that enables them to advance human health,” Erica Hirsch, Thermo Fisher’s laboratory chemicals president, said in a statement.
“The opening of our Mebane site is a testament to our larger strategy to strengthen our manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. and support continued innovation and expanded growth in North Carolina, building on the strong foundation we’ve already established in this state,” Hirsch added.
That includes a center of excellence for lab equipment in Asheville, three life sciences sites in Durham, pharmaceutical manufacturing sites in Greenville and High Point, and a distribution center in Raleigh, the company said.
“Thermo Fisher Scientific’s new facility strengthens North Carolina’s leadership in the biotech sector and strengthens our domestic supply chain,” N.C. Governor Josh Stein said in the statement. “I am proud to welcome this global company to Mebane as it expands its North Carolina presence with 100 good-paying jobs.”
Construction at the Mebane location was supported by a COVID-era deal with the U.S. government: the $192.5 million contract was awarded to Thermo Fisher in 2021 from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense.
This past April, the company pledged to increase its U.S. investments by another $2 billion over the next four years, with about three-quarters slated for manufacturing and the remainder to R&D. More than 50,000 of Thermo Fisher’s global headcount of 125,000 works in the U.S., with about 64 facilities in 37 states.
This year also saw the company ink deals to buy Solventum’s purification and filtration businesses for about $4 billion, as well as acquire a New Jersey sterile fill-and-finishing plant from Sanofi.