GE Healthcare’s life science division has identified Marlborough — home of Boston Scientific as well as more than two dozen other medical device firms — as the site of its new U.S. headquarters and plans to open a 500-employee facility there next spring.
The company is a subsidiary pf global conglomerate General Electric (NYSE: GE) and has its global headquarters in the U.K. GE Healthcare first revealed plans to move its U.S. headquarters from Piscataway, N.J., last week. The current facility in New Jersey has more than 400 employees and the company has indicated plans to cut at least 218 of them.
The new 160,000-square-foot, $21 million building will be a renovation of currently unoccupied space into laboratories, customer application facilities and office space. It's the same building, at 200 Forest St., where Quest Diagnostics moved into 200,000 square feet of space in 2012, as that town has made a push in recent years to build a cluster of life science companies.
GE says it will “complement” GE Healthcare Life Sciences’ existing manufacturing capability in Westborough, consolidating the division’s East Coast presence. In total, the company says it will add another 220 new jobs in the U.S. as part of its reorganization, including lab technicians, biologists, medical doctors, process engineers, and customer service representatives.
The company has been in talks with the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center since June 2013 about a possible move, and will compete with companies in the area such as EMD Millipore for tools used in drug discovery and production.
“Our new facility in Massachusetts will position us for continued innovation and competition in such a fast-paced, innovative industry,” said Kieran Murphy, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Life Sciences. “We will be close to industry-leading talent, customers, and world-class academic and medical institutions across all the industry sectors we serve, from biotech and pharma, to diagnostics and medical devices.”
