The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the rise in demand for laboratory plastics such as pipette and automation tips, storage tubes and plates, transfer pipettes, and packaging vials and bottles
Thermo Fisher will enhance laboratory plastics production to support Covid-19 testing. (Credit: Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc)
Thermo Fisher Scientific is set to invest over $140m to further increase the production of laboratory plastics consumables to meet the demand from the customers for Covid-19 testing.
Also, the investment will help to extend the production of plastic products for the development and manufacturing of therapies and vaccines.
The demand for laboratory plastics is due to the sudden increase in the production associated with Covid-19 testing, and the development and manufacturing of therapies and vaccines.
The laboratory plastics products include pipette and automation tips, storage tubes and plates, transfer pipettes, and packaging vials and bottles.
Thermo Fisher to create over 1,000 new jobs to meet current requirements
To meet the requirements, Thermo Fisher will recruit over 1,000 people across manufacturing sites worldwide. It will help increase automation capabilities and optimise warehouse and sterilisation capacity to enhance supply chain agility.
At present, the company will expand its sites located in Rochester of New York, Petaluma of California, Monterrey and Tijuana of Mexico and Joensuu of Finland.
The company provides a range of laboratory plastics, including Thermo Scientific Nalgene and Nunc plasticware and the Thermo Scientific manual and electronic pipetting systems.
Thermo Fisher offers bottles, beakers, funnels and tubes to pipettes, tips and diagnostic plates, which are said to support Covid-19 critical work across the globe.
It provides sample collection vials for diagnostic test kits, pipettes for test processing, lab essentials for research into therapies and vaccines, lab plastics to support clinical and epidemiological studies, and materials for vaccine production and biobanking.
Thermo Fisher Scientific life sciences solutions and laboratory products president and senior vice president Fred Lowery said: “Early in the pandemic, we quickly joined forces with governments, public health agencies and industry to increase capacity across our laboratory plastics production facilities and address the growing Covid-19 threat.
“However, demand quickly exceeded those early expansion projects, so we began a series of additional expansions to meet the growing needs of our customers.”