State Grant Final Piece Of Lonza Expansion | Patrick tours three MetroWest businesses
When Gov. Deval Patrick announced a $2.5 million grant for the town of Hopkinton to finalize a sewer connection with Milford, it was good news for the two towns involved.
But for Michael Cicio, vice president of operations for Lonza in Hopkinton, it was great news.
Lonza, a Swiss biotechnology company with operations in Hopkinton, has invested about $100 million and added about 200 employees at its facility in the past two years. But to get the newly expanded manufacturing areas fully operational, the company needed additional sewage capacity.
And they'll get that extra capacity thanks to the grant, which is from the state's MORE (Massachusetts Opportunity Relocation and Expansion) program. Patrick announced the funding Tuesday during a tour of a handful of MetroWest biotech companies.
Expansion Opportunities
"This was really needed in order to fully utilize the potential of the new manufacturing investments we've made," Cicio said. "We really needed this to close the deal."
By mid-summer, town and company officials expect the sewer connection between Milford and Hopkinton to be complete, allowing Lonza's wastewater to be treated in Milford.
Cicio said Lonza will now be able to increase its customer base, which includes biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies across the region. Lonza makes therapy and testing products for biotech and pharmaceutical companies.
The $2.5 million grant will be combined with another $1.3 million Hopkinton residents have already approved for the Milford sewer connection.
More than $60 million in MORE grants have been distributed in the past few years, helping to create more than 1,400 jobs, according to Kofi Jones, spokesperson for the state Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.
Tour Dates
Before popping in at Lonza on Tuesday to make the $2.5 million commitment, Patrick also spoke at the Marlborough Regional Chamber of Commerce, toured Caliper Life Sciences, as well as the Hopkinton office of Arteriocyte Inc. Arteriocyte has about 60 employees, most of whom work in Hopkinton and Cleveland, Ohio.
Kevin Hrosovsky, president and CEO of Caliper, lobbied Patrick for government investment, which he said could allow the company to accelerate and expand its plans to add about 75 new jobs in the next five years.
Earlier in the day, Caliper announced that it posted a profitable fourth quarter last year. Hrusovsky said the profit was the result of strong sales in high-margin products. A big part of the company's growth has been purchasing three companies in the last five years and moving jobs from California to Hopkinton, Hrusovsky said. The company has 425 employees. About 140 of them are in Massachusetts.
One of the company's major focuses in the future will be developing the next generation of its LabChip product that will be used specifically to sequence the human genome. The company has created an advisory board with leading genome scientists from around the world to help the development of the product.
"What used to take hours will be done in minutes," Hrusovsky said referring to the LabChip's potential for genome sequencing.
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