North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein joins Thermo Fisher Scientific executives at the ribbon-cutting for the company’s new pipette tip manufacturing facility in Mebane, N.C.
Thermo Fisher Scientific has opened a 375,000-square-foot, carbon-neutral plant in Mebane, North Carolina, designed to produce at least 40 million pipette tips per week to shore up U.S. supplies of a lab consumable critical to research and diagnostics.
The company held a ribbon-cutting Thursday. The Mebane site uses advanced automation for manufacturing, packaging and shipping and is part of a broader push to localize key inputs exposed as fragile during the pandemic-era shortages.
The facility stems from a $192.5 million 2021 contract coordinated with HHS and the DoD to expand domestic pipette-tip capacity after widespread shortages during COVID-19.
Erica Hirsch, Thermo Fisher’s president of laboratory chemicals, said in a statement that the site strengthens an “agile supply chain” for customers working to advance human health.
North Carolina footprint and hiring
Thermo Fisher says it employs about 7,800 people across 13 North Carolina sites (including Asheville, Durham, Greenville, High Point and a Raleigh distribution hub). The Mebane site has hired 40 workers so far and plans to add about 50 roles in manufacturing, engineering and operations.
Thermo Fisher says it employs about 7,800 people across 13 North Carolina sites (including Asheville, Durham, Greenville, High Point and a Raleigh distribution hub). The Mebane site has hired 40 workers so far and plans to add about 50 roles in manufacturing, engineering and operations.
The new facility is the latest of several U.S. facilities that it has added in recent years. In Carlsbad, California, Thermo Fisher opened an Advanced Therapies Collaboration Center this year to accelerate cell-therapy development. The company launched a cGMP cell-therapy manufacturing facility in San Francisco’s Mission Bay district in 2023 through a partnership with the University of California, San Francisco. In Ogden, Utah, a new bioprocessing site focused on single-use bioprocess containers came online in 2022. That same year, Thermo Fisher unveiled its largest single-use technology manufacturing plant in Lebanon, Tennessee. Back in 2020, the company started up a facility in Lenexa, Kansas, dedicated to viral transport media production.
Thermo Fisher reports annual revenue over $40 billion and says it invests about $1 billion annually in U.S. R&D; it has more than doubled its U.S. workforce since 2017 to 50,000+.
