Thermo Fisher Scientific announced the grand opening of its manufacturing facility in Mebane, North Carolina. The new 375,000-square-foot site, which the company said is carbon neutral, will be capable of producing at least 40 million laboratory pipette tips per week.
Pipette tips are critical tools for research and diagnostics, enabling precise liquid handling in high-volume applications such as disease studies and diagnostic testing. The new Mebane site is built for efficiency, with advanced automation that produces 96 tips every 12 seconds and 5,000 finished assemblies per hour. Designed for seamless operations, it also features automated packaging and shipping to meet growing customer demand.
The new Mebane site has already hired 40 people and is expected to add 50 jobs in manufacturing, engineering and business operations. Thermo Fisher currently employs approximately 7,800 colleagues across 13 sites in North Carolina, including a center of excellence for laboratory equipment in Asheville, three life sciences and manufacturing sites in Durham, pharmaceutical manufacturing sites in Greenville and High Point, and a Raleigh distribution center.
The site results from a $192.5 million contract, in coordination with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), awarded in 2021. In addition to investing $1 billion in R&D in the U.S. annually, Thermo Fisher has more than doubled in size in the U.S. since 2017, now employing more than 50,000 people in the U.S. today.
