The company says it will make at-home rapid COVID-19 test kits.
Frederick, Md. (KM) – It was a big day on Thursday in Frederick. A grand opening was held at Ellume, an Australian-based company which will be operating out of an 180,000-square-foot facility along Executive Way just off of Route 85. It will manufacture in-home rapid test kits for COVID-19.
“Ellume’s COVID-19 home test was the very first to receive an EUA (Emergency Use Authorization} from the FDA,” says Governor Larry Hogan, who was on hand for the event. “And it remains the gold standard product for quality, accuracy and ease of use.”
Ellume is a digital diagnostics company and a producer of COVID-19 test kits.
In his remarks, Governor Hogan said this facility, once it’s fully operational, will have the capability to make 15-million COVID-19 home tests per month. “That will be all manufactured in Frederick County and right here in the state of Maryland,:’ he said.
Last year, Ellume received a contract with the US Department of Defense to manufacture COVID-19 test kits.
The company says it will create 200 new jobs to start out, and bring in 1500 new jobs when the facility is operating at full capacity.
This is Ellume’s first facility in the United States. “Ellume said they chose Maryland–they could have gone other places–but they chose Maryland because of its proximity to the Nation’s Capital, and that we’re home to the NIH and the FDA and many of our other top federal agencies,” Governor Hogan said.; “They chose Maryland because we’re home to world class research centers and one of the top biohealth clusters in America; because we have the most educated workforce in the country. And because for the past eight years, our administration has fostered an unabashedly pro-jobs and pro-business, pro-innovation environment here in the state.”
Ellume says test assembly operations began at its Frederick facility in February, 2022.
By Kevin McManus