Ellume to open new Richlands manufacturing facility, 450 jobs to be advertised
Hundreds of jobs will be created as a new health manufacturer prepares to pump out 15 million products a month in the city’s southwest in the coming weeks. FIND OUT WHAT’S ON OFFER.
QLD Business
Don't miss out on the headlines from QLD Business. Followed categories will be added to My News.
HUNDREDS of jobs and millions of coronavirus tests will soon be pumped out of a brand new $50 million facility in Brisbane’s southwest.
Medical diagnostics start-up Ellume is gearing up to open their new manufacturing facility in the Richlands in October.
Flowtech, wins right to test all masks coming in to the state
New twin-tower proposal for Merivale Street, South Brisbane
La Nina summer expected as ‘inland seas’ form in Queensland outback
The new 4,500 sqm facility at 19 Macgregor Place, Richlands will produce 15 million tests a month for COVID-19, the flu and tuberculosis, which will be exported to the United States.
Around 450 jobs across a variety of fields will need to be filled when the facility is fully completed in the middle of next month.
Both skilled and unskilled jobs will be advertised to help assemble testing kits in the coming weeks, with the company going from just 100 employees at present to over 500.
Ellume’s tests, first dreamt up during the 2009 Swine flu pandemic, can return a result in around 15 minutes.
It comes as the company looks to scale up manufacturing of its technology to meet the demand for virus testing.
“We have world class technology and we’ve really had to work hard at developing that over the past decade,” Ellume managing director Dr Sean Parsons said.
“It’s great to see our great tech leading to these terrific products, that we’re manufacturing at very large volumes to meet global demand,” Dr Parsons said.
Despite pressure from American investors and partners to establish manufacturing in the United States, the Brisbane-based company’s founder said southeast Queensland, and particularly the Richlands, provided a convincing argument.
“We think there’s no reason we can’t have a world-leading technology company based here in Queensland,” he said.
“We selected the Richlands site based on its proximity to major arterial corridors.”
The connections offered by Brisbane and Wellcamp airports also made southeast Queensland attractive.
Dr Parsons said Brisbane also offered up skilled workers and he would continue to look to southeast Queensland first when it came to building more manufacturing centres, especially as case numbers of COVID-19 continue to climb worldwide.
“We’re looking to ramp our production to meet this COVID surge,” he said.
“If we think it makes sense to expand production here, rather than overseas, we would love to do that.”
“We would love to build a world leading business here in Queensland.”