180 workers at Puritan Medical on furlough as COVID-19 test demand declines

File Photo / Maureen Milliken Puritan Medical Products, which last summer was advertising for employees in Guilford, has furloughed some workers who make COVID-19 test swabs in Pittsfield. The company has removed this hiring sign.

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By William Hall

Guilford-based Puritan Medical Products, the sole U.S. manufacturer of swabs used in COVID-19 diagnostic tests, said Thursday it has extended a furlough of 180 Pittsfield employees as demand for the tests declines.

The temporary downtime began June 17 and was due to end next Monday, July 12. But now the workers won’t be back at their jobs until Aug. 2, Puritan said in a statement to Mainebiz.

The furloughed employees work at the company’s swab-making facility at 129 North Main St. in Pittsfield, one of two plants Puritan opened there last year in response to the pandemic.

“Puritan’s swab production has outpaced an unexpected drop in demand for the foam swabs used for COVID-19 testing. The expected swab orders in July will support the August 2, 2021, scheduled recall of employees and the resumption of production at the facility,” the company’s statement read.

Workers affected by the halt include machine operators, material handlers and technicians, spokeswoman Virginia Templet told Mainebiz on Friday. They’re continuing to receive health insurance benefits during the furlough, she added.

The employees were notified of the extension on Wednesday. The news comes as another manufacturer of COVID-19 diagnostic products, Chicago-based Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT), announced Thursday it is laying off a total of 410 workers at its test-making sites in Westbrook and Scarborough.

“We’ve recently seen a significant, rapid decline in COVID-19 testing demand and anticipate this trend will continue. Because of this, we are reducing our workforce that produces rapid tests in Westbrook and Scarborough,” Abbott spokesman Scott Stoffel told Mainebiz.

An 'unprecedented' year, furlough

Puritan employs 1,300 people, up from about 500 before the pandemic, Mainebiz reported in March.

Pre-COVID, Puritan had annual revenues of $45 million. The family-owned company hasn’t disclosed more recent revenue figures, but did receive $126 million in federal contracts last year for its specialized foam test swabs.

The funding allowed Puritan to build the two plants in Pittsfield, supplementing the one in Guilford.

More recently, the company has been awarded another $147 million contract to build a fourth manufacturing facility, in Orlinda, Tenn. Puritan expects to employ another 800 workers there. In total, the company has said it will be turning out 250 million foam-tip swabs a month by February 2022.

"Our capacity to produce COVID-19 swabs per month remains at the peak level that was requested by the government and our customers," Templet said Friday. She emphasized that the furlough doesn't affect workers in the other Puritan sites or the company's plans in Tennessee.

Regardless of the downtick in demand, the scale of Puritan's work represents a big transformation for a previously low-profile business that began as a toothpick maker 102 years ago. It later expanded its product line and in 1928 introduced its first medical product — the wooden tongue depressor, which Puritan still makes today. In fact, the company now makes roughly 1,200 products, including 65 types of swabs.

In 2020, Puritan was named Company of the Year by Inc. magazine in its inaugural Best in Business Awards. In March, Mainebiz named Puritan General Manager Scott Wellman a 2021 Business Leader of the Year.

The company commented in its statement Thursday: "Everything about this last year was unprecedented and unpredictable, including the current furlough. Each employee who has worked at Puritan over the past year is a hero. We want everyone to know that we appreciate how these employees have risen to the challenge.”

Templet echoed that statement, and told Mainebiz, “We look forward to the resumption of production at [Pittsfield] and doing what we do best — making swabs that help keep Americans and the rest of the world safer.”