Life Science Company Expands, Invests $115M in New Campus

A rendering of MilliporeSigma’s new facility at 400 Wheeler Road in Burlington, MA.

BURLINGTON, MA—German life science company MilliporeSigma is relocating operations in Billerica, MA to a new $115-millon campus being built here. The company, which is the life science business of Darmstadt, Germany-based Merck KGaA, commenced construction on its new 280,000-square-foot complex at 400 Wheeler Road earlier this week. The new facility will serve as a major hub for its North American business and will feature, along with corporate office space, a customer collaboration laboratory and training center. The firm currently operates in Billerica at 290 Concord Road. The building there totals approximately 147,000 square feet. MilliporeSigma also has operations in 125,000 square feet at two other buildings on Middlesex Turnpike in Billerica. A total of 850 employees from all three buildings will move to the new campus in mid-2017, a company spokesperson tells Globest.com. MilliporeSigma will maintain its other North American life science hub in St. Louis, MO. In connection with its Burlington complex, MilliporeSigma entered into a Tax Incremental Financing Agreement with the Town of Burlington that will garner the firm approximately $2.1 million in tax savings. There is a potential for approximately $1 million in additional tax savings if the company exercises options to expand the Burlington site by another 70,000 square feet in the future. The five-story, single-tenant LEED-certified building that is located near Route 3 and Route 128 is being built by The Gutierrez Company. The new building is part of The Gutierrez Co.’s master-planned Burlington Summit office park. According to the developer’s website, major tenants at the park currently include: 128 Technology, Verizon, Linkage, Lewis PR, Black and Veatch, Unitrends and the Gutierrez Company. “This new and more expansive MilliporeSigma campus gives us a unique, multi-use life science hub in the United States—one that provides our employees and customers with a sustainable and collaborative working environment,” says Udit Batra, member, executive board, Merck KGaA and CEO, MilliporeSigma. “We have a long history in the Commonwealth, and as a global leader in life science, we are committed to strengthening our presence in one of the most important science and technology hubs in the world.” The company explains that the campus will be a global destination for its customers. In addition to a customer service and call center, the facility will feature an MLab Collaboration Center, which it describes as a “state-of-the-art, shared, exploratory environment where the company’s scientists and engineers work together with customers to help solve their toughest life science challenges.” It will be one of nine such collaboration centers worldwide. Other locations will include: Brazil, China, France, India, Singapore and South Korea. The new enhanced M Lab Collaboration Center in Burlington will replace the flagship M Lab at the company’s Billerica facility. The life science business of Merck KGaA, which operates as MilliporeSigma in the US and Canada, has 19,000 employees and 65 manufacturing sites worldwide, with a portfolio of more than 300,000 products enabling scientific discovery.