Millipore facility in Anderson to close, cut 100 jobs in Anderson

One hundred Anderson jobs are moving to Massachusetts as Millipore Corporation announced Monday that its Anderson facility at 6100 Bellevue Lane will close April 30. Twenty-six of those 100 were already laid off in January. The company plans to consolidate operations of the Anderson facility with those of a facility in Danverse, Mass., "to keep pace with expansion," Karen Hall, director of corporate communications. "The Anderson location couldn't support the expansion."

Millipore expanded its facilities in Danverse in 2008, and the improved location would take on the extra workload in May. The Anderson facility was the only other location besides Danverse where the company housed its Mobius Manufacturing Operations. Hall expected that a matching 52 employees would be hired to operate the 10,000 square-foot facility in Danverse.

Despite a global recession, "this area of our business is expanding rapidly," Hall explained. The line of products involves disposable bio-pharmaceutical supplies.

"They (Millipore Corp.) don't produce taxable items as far as sales tax is concerned," Anderson City Manager Scott Morgan said. "The impact comes from the loss of wages to those 52 employees, it reverberates through the whole economy."

"These are the types of companies we like to keep around," Shasta County Economic Development Corporation President Greg O'Sullivan said of industries that export products outside of the area. "They import a great deal more revenue than they use up."

O'Sullivan credited the EDC for originally recruiting the company to Shasta County.

"We target medical device industry because they're typically more recession proof," O'Sullivan said.

The Anderson location previously housed Newport Biosystems until they were acquired by Millipore in 2006.