Manufacturing

Bisousweet Confections will renovate and purchase equipment for its new 20,000-square-foot facility in Leominster with a $1.25 million loan from MassDevelopment.

Aspen Aerogels has completed construction on its 59,000-square-foot engineering and rapid prototyping facility in Marlborough. The company held a ribbon cutting ceremony at the site on Wednesday.

A portion of a commercial lot at 1059 Grafton St. in Worcester was sold for $775,000 to a company planning to build a car wash at the property.

While the business community throughout Massachusetts have begun to feel pessimistic about the state’s economic outlook for the first time in three years, company leaders in Central Mass. remain cautiously optimistic, according to the monthly index from the Associated Industries of Massachusetts.

Manufacturing company Kopin elected director James Brewington as its new chairman of the board, replacing company founder John Fan.

AquaBounty Technologies, a Maynard-based salmon-farming company, has paused construction on its planned 479,000-square-foot Pioneer, Ohio fish farm, because of an increase in projected construction costs.

Gov. Maura Healey and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center announced $24.4 million in tax incentive awards Tuesday that they expect will help 43 life sciences companies create nearly 1,600 new jobs, and officials teased more "exciting" life sciences news around the corner as the BIO International Convention lands in Boston next week.

WBJ is conducting a Midyear Economic Forecast survey of its readers to gauge how the events so far in 2023 have impacted their outlooks on the Central Massachusetts economy. Those who fill out the survey by June 14 will be eligible to win one of three $50 gift cards to an area restaurant.

After being nearly flat over the past two weeks, Worcester metro gas prices came out of Memorial Day weekend up nearly 9 cents per gallon over the previous week.

RP Masiello broke ground on a new biopharma manufacturing facility on Commerce Drive in Northbridge on Wednesday. The 40,000-square-foot project is expected to be completed in late 2024.