NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Thermo Fisher Scientific is cutting 43 jobs from its Milwaukee facility, the company announced on Thursday.
The company has about 100 employees at the facility, and the cuts are expected to be finished by August, Thermo Fisher said.
Ron O'Brien, a spokesman for the company, said that the cuts are being made as part of the transfer of part of the Milwaukee operations to Vilnius, Lithuania, where Fermentas, which Thermo Fisher acquired in July 2010, is based. He said the jobs being eliminated are in production but had no further details.
Thermo Fisher has made no announcements whether the transfer of operations will result in job hires in Vilnius.
In a statement, the firm said that it "will do everything possible to support the 43 employees at this site who are affected, and we will follow all mandated processes." It added that the transfer of operations and the job cuts are "designed to strengthen our operations, help us better serve our customers worldwide and provide continued growth opportunities for our 39,000 employees over the long term."
In the company's third-quarter earnings document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission it reported a headcount reduction of about 890 through the first nine months of 2011. And during its third-quarter conference call company officials also said that cost-reduction initiatives had been started to counter a slowdown in its academic/government end market.
Last week Thermo Fisher President and CEO Marc Casper said on the firm's fourth-quarter earnings conference call that the restructuring and cost-cutting moves are expected to save the company about $100 million in total between 2011 and 2013.