Province invests $2.5M in Ottawa medical manufacturing facility
The Ontario government announced an investment of $2.5 million in a medical-manufacturing facility owned by Siemens Healthineers in Ottawa.
The funding, which will complement the $20 million already being invested in the project by the company, will go toward expanding the Siemens facility on Brookfield Road in Ottawa’s south end.
The investment will help increase production capacity of the epoc Blood Analysis System, a handheld device that can analyze oxygen levels in blood, helping clinicians make faster decisions. The project is expected to create 93 jobs over five years.
The funding is being provided through the Ontario Together Fund. The fund was created in 2020 to support businesses that enhance Ontario’s domestic supply chain capacity, and ensure the province is prepared for future challenges. The fund was topped up with an additional $50 million this year.
“The renewed Ontario Together Fund will continue to strengthen our domestic manufacturing sector, support local innovators and boost our world-class MedTech ecosystem,” said Vic Fedeli, Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade.
Siemens Healthineers will use the funding to increase their domestic manufacturing capacity of the epoc Test Card used in the Blood Analysis System. It will add two manufacturing lines and packaging automation and make 2.4 million cards per month, increasing production capacity by 125 percent.
“We are very grateful to have received the Ontario Together Fund for our Point of Care business in Ottawa,” said Mathias Ganzmann, Vice President, Site Operations, Siemens Healthineers. “This funding will help us with our expansion plans over the coming years as we add more manufacturing capacity. This is a boost for our Ottawa employees and our work in supporting the healthcare sector and all the frontline workers doing such important work in Ontario.”
Siemens Healthineers employs more than 350 people in Ottawa, and is in the midst of a 24,000-square foot expansion to its Brookfield Road facility. Construction is expected to be finished late next year, and the expanded plant is expected to be fully operational by the spring of 2024.
Since its launch in April 2020, the Ontario Together Fund has helped several businesses with innovative ideas and solutions to retool or adapt their operations to produce supplies and equipment for the health care sector and frontline workers. Other fund recipients include:
- Guelph-based Linamar Corp. retooled its assembly line to manufacture ventilator components to produce 10,000 Ontario-made e700 ventilators, in partnership with O-Two Medical Technologies and Bombardier.
- An investment in Greenfield Global resulted in a major upgrade of the Johnstown, Ontario facility’s distillation technology to domestically produce over 114 million litres of specialty medical-grade alcohol annually, to be used in hand sanitizers and other applications that rely on high purity alcohol.
- OPHARDT Hygiene Technologies Inc. expanded its facilities to manufacture soap and sanitizer dispensers in Ontario. This new capacity has helped localize and expand production, thereby increasing the supply of up to 300,000 dispensers and one million dispenser drive modules per year in Ontario.