Photo / Courtesy, Puritan Medical Products
Robert L. Shultz, president and CFO of Puritan Medical Products
11 hours ago
A year after major restructuring, Puritan Medical Products is hiring again
File photo / Courtesy of Puritan Medical Products
Puritan Medical Products at the height of production.
In 2020, Puritan Medical Products Co. was tapped by the federal government as the primary manufacturer of swabs to be used in COVID-19 test kits.
Riding a wave of demand, with millions in federal pandemic money, the Penobscot County-based company added three factories — two in Pittsfield, Somerset County, and one in Tennessee — and bulked up its staff to more than 1,200 employees. The Tennessee plant alone represented an investment of $220 million.
By June 2023, with the pandemic emergency declared over by the Centers for Disease Control, the air came out of the balloon. Puritan announced plans to close its Tennessee plant and slash a third of its workforce. When the shakeout was complete, there were fewer than 400 employees remaining and the company was part of a crowded field of swab makers and test manufacturers trying to readjust to plummeting sales.
"The impact has been swift and significant," Robert L. Shultz, Puritan's president and CFO, told Mainebiz in June 2023.
Now, 16 months after that restructuring, Puritan Medical Products said it is again hiring, looking to add 50 employees to its present roster of 450.
Shultz, who spoke to Mainebiz this week from Puritan's Falmouth sales office, said Puritan's customers included test-kit makers Abbott, Quidel, Thermo Fisher, Roche and Cue Health. All went through major restructurings. In June, Cue Health filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Amid supply-chain disruptions during the pandemic, Puritan's customers were stockpiling huge supplies of swabs, then slashed orders as the pandemic waned.
"They had to bleed through the inventory," he said.
But in the past year, the industry has regained its footing, and most of Puritan's customers have survived, Shultz said.
Today, orders for Puritan's swabs are up 45% from pre-pandemic levels. (Puritan, which is privately held, does not disclose its sales figures.)
"COVID tests are now part of seasonal mix of tests," Shultz said, citing flu, RSV and strep tests, all of which require swabs.
Going forward, Shultz said Puritan expects several factors to drive sales, including COVID home test-kits, demand for U.S.-made test products, consolidation of the kit-manufacturing sector and a surge of demand for swabs for industrial, medical and surgical use.
Another thing driving Puritan's hiring surge is that the company became extremely lean during the restructuring, with employment falling as low as the mid-300s, Shultz said.
"We cut into muscle, but we had to," he said. "We can now hire for the long-term instead of as a reaction."
New hires
Because demand for swabs still fluctuates with cold-and-flu season, about 20% of the new hires will be seasonal workers.
With the staff now at 450, Puritan is looking to hire 50 employees for the plants in Guilford (the original factory) and Pittsfield. Puritan also has a warehouse in Dover-Foxcroft.
Puritan is recruiting operators, technicians, quality control specialists, customer service and salespeople.
As part of it the recruiting and training efforts, Puritan is working with community colleges, and met recently with David Daigler, president of the Maine Community College System.
"It's an opportunity for us to get better at training and development," Shultz said.
Puritan also received a $250,000 grant from the Mills administration as part of the Department of Economic and Community Development’s domestic trade program, to support U.S. sales of non-COVID related products.
Even with the new hires, Puritan expects stay nimble.
"We are still working toward optimal organization," Shultz said. "We're trying to be a lean operation because of the labor dynamics."
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