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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Global life sciences service company Thermo Fisher Scientific continues its run on the annual IndustryWeek Best Plants Award with the selection of its Greenville site as the 2021 winner.
The 1.5 million-square-foot, 142-acre multi-purpose manufacturing and packaging facility is the fourth Thermo Fisher site to receive top site honors from the prominent manufacturing trade publication. Previous winners have included plants in Asheville, N.C.; Auburn, Alabama; and Marietta, Ohio. The award singles out manufacturers for engaged leadership and teams, operational excellence and a commitment to continuous improvement.
“We’re incredibly proud to be recognized by IndustryWeek for our achievements in building world-class manufacturing capabilities to produce critical medicines for our customers and the patients they serve,” said Mike Shafer, senior vice president and president, pharma services for Thermo Fisher Scientific. “Our Greenville team has demonstrated an unwavering customer-centric approach and commitment to continuous improvement to drive operational excellence and exceptional customer service.”
The Greenville plant, which has become one of North Carolina’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers, was acquired by Thermo Fisher in 2017. Three years later, the company announced a $500 million investment to expand sterile drug product development and commercial manufacturing of crucial medicines, therapies and vaccines.
The investment includes a new stand-alone 130,000-square-foot building to house two live-virus filling lines that will be operational in 2022. The site also plans to add six new lines in 2021 and 2022, including commercial-scale liquid filling and a development line for liquid and lyophilized (freeze-dried) drug products.
The expansion will create 500 new jobs and bring the site’s total employment to about 2,000. The company also has close to 700 people at its two Ashville area plants and another 130 in Durham.
Thermo Fisher recently announced that it is beginning to make “hundreds of millions of doses” of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine at the Greenville plant under an agreement between the two companies.
IndustryWeek’s Best Plants Awards program was established in 1990 to highlight sites in North America that “are on the leading edge of efforts to increase competitiveness, enhance customer satisfaction and create stimulating and rewarding work environments.” The award also is designed to encourage manufacturers to adopt world-class practices, technologies and improvement strategies.
Thermo Fisher will be recognized at the November 9-11 Manufacturing & Technology Conference produced by IndustryWeek, EHS Today and Machine Design.
The Waltham, Massachusetts-headquartered company reports revenues exceeding $30 billion and employs more than 80,000 people globally. Its mission is to “enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer.”
(C) N.C. Biotech Center
