Courtesy / Puritan Medical Products
Second-shift Puritan employees are seen here at the company’s new Pittsfield factory.
August 16, 2020
Additional $51M will allow Puritan to boost production of COVID-19 swabs
PHOTO / FRED FIELD
Puritan Medical Products in Guilford received an additional $51.2 million in federal funding to increase production of COVID-19 flock tip swabs.
By Staff
An additional $51.2 million in federal funding will allow Guilford medical device manufacturer Puritan Medical Products to increase production of COVID-19 flock tip swabs to 50 million per month.
The money builds on a $75.5 million contract awarded to Puritan in April, which was used to double production of foam swabs to 40 million per month.
Together, the contracts bring Puritan’s total production of flock tip swabs and foam swabs to at least 90 million per month as well as allow the company to hire additional employees, according to a news release.
The award was funded from appropriations provided to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services CARES Act.
“Increasing the production of COVID-19 swabs to at least 90 million per month will provide a tremendous boost to testing efforts, helping to reduce the spread of the virus and allowing us to safely reopen communities,” U.S. Sen. Susan Collins said in the release.
The CARES Act included $1 billion for the Defense Production Act in order to increase domestic production capacity for materials necessary to combat COVID-19 as well as more than $140 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services to combat COVID-19.
The initial $75.5 million investment for Puritan was used to retrofit a 95,000-square-foot building owned by Cianbro Corp., in Pittsfield, into a modern manufacturing facility. Cianbro oversaw renovations on the new production facility.
The new medical device manufacturing space includes a Class 7 cleanroom. The building was mostly empty since UTC Fire and Security moved out in 2015.
Puritan is leasing the space from Cianbro, which bought the sprawling warehouse in 2018.
The expansion created 150 new jobs to staff the new factory.
Puritan previously employed 500 workers.
In May, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works finalized a contract with Puritan to build 30 Puritan-designed wrapping machines to package the specialized swabs.
Antron Engineering in Bellingham, Mass., has been an additional partner in creating machine sub-assemblies.In an April blog post, Puritan noted it was thrust into the spotlight as a critical manufacturer in the supply chain for COVID-19 testing supplies because it is one of only two suppliers worldwide that produces the specialized swab CDC recommends for nasopharyngeal sample collection.
Demand for the swab and its transport medium skyrocketed, quickly exhausting supplies across the country.
Typically, the company makes more than 1,200 different types of swabs and collection devices for a variety of industries, normally producing over 12 million swabs per day.
Biomedical and life science companies are considered essential under the rules for what businesses can be operating during the crisis.
MMA, JAX partnership
In June, Puritan partnered with Bar Harbor nonprofit biomedical research institute Jackson Laboratory and Maine Maritime Academy to double-test 60 senior students, faculty and crew of the academy’s training ship State of Maine before boarding.
The tests used specimen collection kits from Puritan. JAX tested the patient samples for the presence of the virus at its Connecticut-licensed laboratory and turned around test results within 24 hours.
In order to graduate, senior engineering and navigation students must accrue final hours of sea time and experience required by the U.S. Coast Guard to obtain their unlimited license credentials, according to a separate news release.
A serendipitous turn of events brought the partnership about.
“I re-connected with Timothy Templet at Puritan, with whom I went to high school, and he introduced me to LuAnn Ballesteros, a member of the leadership team at JAX, and the details fell into place. It is a wonderful testament to interpersonal connections in the state of Maine,” the academy’s president, William Brennan, said in the release.
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