Hologic gets $2.2M to add 225 jobs at new facility

Hologic will build a new breast and skeletal health R&D center at its Glasgow campus, hiring up to 225 people in the next few years. | DBT PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS

GLASGOW – The medical technology company Hologic plans to build a new $24 million research and development, and manufacturing center at its Glasgow Business Community campus, which will allow it to more than double its workforce in the state.

A Fortune 1000 public company based in Massachusetts, Hologic is a leader in the women’s health industry, designing, making, and selling medical devices for diagnostics, surgery, and medical imaging. It has operated a facility in Glasgow since 1999 but was looking to build a world-class center for its breast and skeletal health businesses.

On Monday, the state’s incentive investment board, the Council on Development Finance, unanimously approved nearly $2.2 million in taxpayer-backed grants to support the project. That’s split between more than $1.4 million to create 225 new full-time jobs at the facility and $720,000 to support the construction of the facility.

The 100,000-square-foot center would include a create a hub for the company’s X-ray imaging innovations, John Flock, Hologic’s site selector from PwC, told the council.

“This is a very exciting project for Hologic; they are more than thrilled to be coming to Delaware,” he added. “We do appreciate the incentive offers that have been made. That is a factor in Hologic’s decision to locate in Delaware.”

The company already employs 160 people in Delaware – one of nine sites in the U.S., and one of 40 worldwide. The addition of 225 new employees would be a 140% job growth by the company within three years of the new center opening. It tentatively has estimated hiring 55 people in 2023 and 135 and 35 in the two subsequent years.

The investment of taxpayer-backed grants is not the first for Hologic, which also received a $1.1 million grant in 2012 to hire additional employees. It fell 17 employees short of its hiring goal with that grant and was forced to repay the state the received incentive on those employees in 2016.

Jordan Schulties, director of the Division of Small Business that oversee the CDF, noted that situation was common under the prior guidelines of the grant program in which funds were allocated upfront and forced to be repaid if recipients failed to uphold hiring or investment targets.

The Carney administration changed the Strategic Fund grant program to a pay-as-you-go model that allocates awarded funds as companies fulfill targets, ensuring that funds no longer have to be repaid. These latest grants to Hologic will work under that model.

The investment in Hologic marks the second major investment in the Glasgow business park after the CDF signed off on nearly $2 million in incentives for a $32 million expansion by Siemens Healthineers last month. 

Hologic’s Delaware presence traces back to DuPont, which originally developed the property at 600 Technology Drive for its own X-ray film business. Sterling Group later purchased the site from DuPont, eventually selling it to Hologic in 1999. It added a $14.8 million, 9,500-square-foot addition in 2012.

As a key member of Delaware’s medical technology community, Hologic conducts extensive charitable outreach that has included donating money and time to a nonprofit that aids military veterans, providing meals to low-income students, completing home remodeling projects for cancer survivors, holding blood donation drives and hosting fundraising campaigns for a breast-cancer support group.

“Hologic has enjoyed a long history as part of the Newark community, as we drive innovations that transform the detection and treatment of breast cancer globally,” said Jennifer Meade, president of Hologic’s Breast and Skeletal Health Solutions Division, in a statement released after the grant approval. “We are excited to expand our presence and our partnership with the county and with the state of Delaware, enabling us to have an even greater impact on the lives of women around the world.”