Puritan Medical Products Co., the Guilford-based manufacturer that has multiplied its COVID-19 test swab production there and in Pittsfield over the past year, is heading south to open a fourth manufacturing facility.
The Department of Defense announced this week it has awarded Puritan a $146.8 million contract to expand swab production with the creation of a new plant in Orlinda, Tenn.
The contract, a modification of a previous agreement with the DoD, will allow Puritan to renovate an existing facility in Orlinda, about 45 minutes north of Nashville and just south of the Kentucky border. With the additional capacity, Puritan is expected to turn out a total of 250 million foam-tip swabs a month by February 2022, according to a news release.
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As part of a new national initiative, Maine will receive up to $100,000 in grant funding and other support to accelerate COVID-19 workforce recovery.
Maine was selected as one of the first nine states in the Workforce Innovation Network, a joint initiative of the National Governors Association and Cognizant U.S. Foundation.
The state will receive a grant to improve employment outcomes in response to the economic impacts of COVID-19, connecting job seekers to training, education, job opportunities and essential support services, according to a news release.
“There are good-paying jobs in the trades, in electrical and plumbing work, in construction and manufacturing, in health care and life sciences and in clean energy that are going unfilled,” Gov. Janet Mills said in the release. “Our economic recovery depends on our ability to connect Maine workers to those jobs.”
Timothy Templet’s phone started ringing in mid-March last year and hasn’t stopped ringing since.
Puritan Medical Products Co., the century-old manufacturer of medical swabs in Guilford, found itself in the center of the chaos of the global pandemic and one of only two companies in the world able to produce the testing swab needed to diagnose COVID-19.
The calls that began on Saturday, March 14, 2020, were unlike any Templet, Puritan’s co-owner and executive vice president, has ever fielded before: The White House Covid-19 Response Team; Brett Giroir, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health; the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, among others.