Georgia's $14 Million Bioscience Training Center an Offshoot of Baxter's $1 Billion Plant

Reported by Annette Kreuger, Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--It was a definite win for Georgia's burgeoning bioscience sector when Baxter International Corporation (NYSE:BAX) (Deerfield, Illinois) decided to invest $1 billion to construct a 1 million-square-foot plasma fractionation facility with purification and fill/finish suites in Covington, Georgia. In support of the massive project, now under construction, the state is building the $14 million Georgia BioScience Training Center adjacent to the new plant.

The Center, which is part of the lucrative incentives package worth $219 million offered to Baxter to locate in the state, will help train employees for the new plant. The company expects to eventually employ 1,500 people. Although the Baxter plant will not be fully operational until 2018, the Center will begin training new employees in 2015.

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Cooper Carry (Atlanta, Georgia) designed the two-story, 48,000-square-foot training center that will feature training laboratories, classrooms and computer labs. The facility will be equipped to handle the instruction of general bio lab practices; blood-borne pathogen technology; process controls; bio separation techniques; ultrafiltration; centrifugation; cleanroom practices; maintenance/calibration; antiseptic control techniques; HVAC system controls; OSHA/biotech compliance; validation; and risk assessment procedures.

Beyond the obvious Baxter benefit, the Center will be a major recruitment tool for Georgia as the state seeks other bioscience capital investment. The Technical College System of Georgia's Georgia Quick Start division will operate the Center. Whiting-Turner (Atlanta, Georgia) is building the project, which just started construction and is expected to be complete in early 2015.

Another ancillary project to the Baxter investment is a $14 million wastewater pre-treatment plant. Fluor Constructors (Greenville, South Carolina, and Social Circle, Georgia) is handling construction of the facility, which will handle pre-treatment facility flows of 200,000 to 580,000 gallons per day from Baxter, prior to being pumped to the city of Covington's wastewater treatment system.

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