After pumping millions into its manufacturing capacity to keep up with COVID-related demand and bolster longer-term efforts during the pandemic, Thermo Fisher is winding down operations for good at its Petaluma, California plant and letting go of 74 employees in the process.
The 74 layoffs will take effect on February 1, according to the state's recent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) update. The site itself will close its doors in July, a company spokesperson confirmed over email.
Thermo Fisher’s ten-year lease on the property ends that month, according to the North Bay Business Journal.
The decision to not renew the lease aligns with the company’s “ongoing effort” to “continuously evaluate its global operations to identify opportunities to improve efficiency and effectiveness in meeting our customers’ needs,” the spokesperson said.
“Decisions that impact colleagues and their families are never taken lightly,” Thermo Fisher’s spokesperson added. “All impacted colleagues will receive job transition support to aid them in finding new opportunities.”
The cuts come amid a string of layoffs in the biopharma industry and at Thermo Fisher specifically. Last April, the company shut down its Princeton, New Jersey facility and parted ways with 113 employees. That site was tasked with biologics development and cell therapy services. Thermo Fisher closed the plant to “remain in line with current manufacturing volume demands,” a company spokesperson said at the time.
Then last summer, the manufacturer let go of 205 staffers from two separate sites in Alachua, Florida. The viral vector services offered in Alachua were relocated to Thermo Fisher’s Plainville, Massachusetts facility, a spokesperson said at the time.
The Petaluma site, meanwhile, produced pipette tips, microcentrifuge tubes and racks, the San Francisco Business Times reports. Back in 2020, the company plugged more than $140 million into its laboratory plastics disposables operation to meet COVID testing demand.
The expansion of several of its sites created 1,000 new jobs globally and was followed by a $600 million investment in 11 other Thermo Fisher plants worldwide.