LONDONDERRY — Amid rapid growth, Foxx Life Sciences is poised to move into new headquarters in Londonderry to triple production. Some operations will move from its Salem facility, which will maintain its production clean room.
President and CEO Thomas Taylor said the company has enjoyed over 40% growth per year for seven of the past eight years, and is projecting even more growth this year.
“With that growth, it was critical that we expand into a bigger building,” Taylor said Thursday.
Taylor said he started the company in his home office in Windham in 2008. By summer of 2014, he had five employees. Now, there are 55 to 60 employees with about 125,000 square feet of space.
He said they hold 35 patents and sell more than 3,000 products, 90% of which are manufactured in North America, which he said differs from his competitors.
The old McKesson building at 12 North Wentworth Ave. is being fitted up with front office space, and about 5,000 square feet of warehouse space will be converted to three new clean rooms for manufacturing products over the next six to nine months.
Director of Bioprocess Sales Alice Molteni said the new clean rooms will be critical for the company to keep pace with its growth.
“We are extremely excited about this next step,” Molteni said.
Taylor said he is projecting continued 40 percent or more growth year over year, plus increased profitability from a more efficient warehousing and distribution system. The 75,000-square-foot facility has 30-foot-high ceilings in the warehouse and 13 bay doors, each with its own lights and autolifters.
The company is investing $1 million in renovating the facility and constructing three new clean rooms for sterile manufacturing. It also has lines of credit from the Small Business Administration to grow the company’s inventory.
Over the last nine months, the inventory has grown over $1 million and the company expects to hold more than $6 million of inventory starting at the end of October, ready to ship to customers within 48 hours, Taylor said.
“We ship all over the world,” Taylor said.
For now, Taylor expects Foxx will use about 50 to 60 percent of the warehouse space. The location of the building will also help with distribution, as it’s near Manchester-Boston Regional Airport and next to UPS and FedEx.
The company is leasing the building from North River Company LLC.
Molteni said the diversity of products — single-use pharmaceutical lab equipment, biopharma filtration, fluid management products, lab safety equipment and laboratory glassware — ensures Foxx has a diversity of customers, including big and small manufacturers, research and development firms, and universities.
Last year, the company celebrated a deal to become the exclusive distributors of Borosil, the largest glassware company in India for lab research, and moved into additional space in Salem totaling 55,000 square feet.
After Foxx moves workers and warehouse operations to Londonderry, only 30,000 square feet will remain in Salem at 6 Delaware Drive. The company has been in Salem since 2014.
Taylor said Foxx also plans to announce a new 15,000-square-foot distribution facility in Asia by the end of the year.
Before starting the company, Taylor was president of medical products at Nypro and vice president at Millipore before that. He said Foxx Life Sciences became profitable after one year in business, and he still hasn’t taken a salary.
He also owns a real estate business called Foxx Enterprise. Foxx is Taylor’s middle name.
Taylor said he’s received a lot of support from the state and SBA, and he said the goal is not to sell the company but to keep growing.
“We’ve been offered a lot of money for the company, but we’re kind of old-school stubborn,” Taylor said.
As part of the company’s continued growth, Taylor said Foxx will hire more employees. The company needs quality control, inside sales and some administrative positions.