NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Thermo Fisher Scientific said today that it plans to close its manufacturing plant in Dubuque, Iowa, by September 2010 and will cut the 350 jobs at the facility over coming year.
The plant closing comes just days after the company announced it plans to shut down a plant in Hudson, NH, a move that will cost the town 130 jobs.
"The decision affecting Dubuque was made only after an extensive internal strategic review, and is the result of a number of business factors, including review of current and projected customer needs, and the capacity of existing Thermo Fisher manufacturing facilities," the company said in a statement.
The layoffs at the Dubuque facility will begin after the end of 2009, the company said.
The closure of the New Hampshire facility was partly due to the company's efforts to consolidate some operations in Petaluma, Calif., but the Dubuque closure is not connected to that program, a Thermo Fisher spokesperson told GenomeWeb Daily News in an e-mail today.
The spokesperson said that the Dubuque facility "produces a portfolio of laboratory equipment for life sciences research, such as for the production reagent-grade lab water, and equipment for temperature control, incubation, sterilization, heating, stirring, shaking and high-throughput screening."