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Vaccine maker to put
facility, new jobs in Frederick
by Kevin M. Smith
Staff
Writer
Oct. 29, 2004
After
scouting locations in Maryland, Virginia and Michigan for 14 months,
anthrax vaccine-maker BioPort of Lansing, Mich., has settled on Frederick
for its new manufacturing plant and warehouse, bringing more than 100
jobs, state officials say.
Operating in Frederick under the name Advanced BioSolutions, BioPort's
145,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and 56,000-square-foot
warehousing space will be in the Wedgewood 4 complex, just off the
Buckeystown Pike, south of Interstate 270, according to filings with the
planning commission.
Aris Melissaratos, secretary of the Maryland Department of Business and
Economic Development, confirmed that BioPort has closed on its new
building.
The facilities are expected to create between 100 and 150 jobs
immediately, with an average salary in the manufacturing facility of
$60,000, according to Marie Keegin, director of the Frederick County
Office of Economic Development.
BioPort expects the facility will expand and add jobs, Keegin and
Melissaratos said.
"This is really still a work in progress," Melissaratos said. "Anytime
you talk about 100 jobs, you can usually look at doubling or tripling
those numbers down the road. I'm very optimistic, very bullish about these
things."
Frederick, home to the manufacturing facility of MedImmune Inc. of
Gaithersburg, plus other biotech companies such as DynPort, will host 44 biotech companies
and facilities with the addition of the BioPort plant, the nation's only
manufacturer of anthrax vaccine.
"We're elated that BioPort has chosen Frederick," Keegin said.
BioPort looked at several sites in Maryland, but the "Frederick County
government has worked with this company very hard in the permitting
process to get them here," she said.
BioPort officials did not return several phone calls seeking comment.
The county has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state, and
officials hope BioPort's endeavor will alleviate traffic on I-270, as it
draws county residents who now commute elsewhere.
"This is a great, great development for our area," said Richard
Griffin, director of economic development for the city of Frederick.
"Thirty to 40 percent of the [employed] in Frederick commute down I-270 to
D.C. and into Northern Virginia. A lot of those people would love to be
working here."
Keegin pointed to the higher education rates of Frederick's workers as
an important tool in recruiting businesses.
"We have an extremely well-educated commuter population that would like
to work where they live," Keegin said. "Thirty-eight percent of Frederick
commuters are out-commuters."
BioPort, a rapidly growing biotech firm founded in 1998, employs more
than 300 people and already has a Maryland presence in Antex Biologics of Gaithersburg, which
it acquired in 2003 after Antex filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
in March of that year.
Strategically, the new Frederick venture will help BioPort's two
subsidiaries, Antex and Advanced BioSolutions, complement each other and
take advantage of their proximity to Fort
Detrick and its medical research endeavors.
"We're fortunate to have Fort Detrick" as a recruiting feature, Keegin
said.
Melissaratos said the county's low unemployment rate was actually used
as an enticement, as it showed the county to have a well-educated
workforce.
He also pointed to what he called "cluster strength" in biotech
recruiting efforts: proximity to Fort Detrick, other federal facilities
and the University of Maryland Biotech Institute, plus training programs
at Montgomery and Prince George's colleges appropriate for the workforce
needed.
"What [Advanced BioSystems] will be
doing relies a lot on Project BioShield as a funding
source, so certainly marketing Fort Detrick, [the
National Institutes of Health] and the workforce helped," Melissaratos
said.
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