Dutch medical testing company Qiagen, which has seen huge demand for its COVID-19 test kits, is expanding its manufacturing operations in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Qiagen’s U.S. headquarters and research and development manufacturing facility is in Germantown. It plans to renovate its 146,000-square-foot manufacturing facility there to accommodate expanding production of its testing products for COVID-19 and other diseases.
It has already added around 80 contract workers, and invested $7 million in building renovations and equipment.
The company will also further increase investments and add additional jobs to its more than 300 employees in Montgomery County, and lease additional space in the area.
Qiagen has received state and county incentives for its expansion, including a $1 million loan contingent on job creation and investment from the Maryland Department of Commerce, a $100,000 workforce training grant from the state, and it is eligible for several state tax credits.
Montgomery County has also approved a $100,000 grant, contingent on job creation and investment.
“Montgomery County and Maryland continue to be wonderful to work with. We needed assistance in moving forward quickly with clean room construction and getting equipment in, and they gave us that ability,” said Sean Augerson, vice president and head of operations, Americas and Asia Pacific.
Qiagen has been providing reagent kits needed to scale up large-scale COVID-19 testing to the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute for Genome Sciences since April.
Montgomery County, home to both the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, and dozens of small and large biotechnology companies, is one of the top biohealth hubs in the U.S.
