The 53,000 square-foot site includes laboratory, order fulfilment and warehousing space.
Money was spent on purchasing the building, renovation and modification to accommodate the requirements of the process equipment installed.
The building, which is adjacent to Agilent's existing facility, will house 60 additional staff. Construction started in 2015 and was completed this year.
Use in food safety
Jason Ellis, OFS chemistries quality manager, Folsom Technology Center, Agilent Technologies said it is near the California State Capitol, with a number of government regulatory and private food industry companies nearby.
“The products developed at the Folsom site have been used for critical food safety events such as melamine contamination in baby formula in China in 2008, and PAH contamination in seafood as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010,” he told FoodQualityNews.
“Additionally, these products are consistently used in routine food quality testing methods to screen for pesticide content, evaluate adulteration in olive and other food oils, alcoholic beverage flavour and quality testing, etc.”
It has a customer applications lab and collaboration space and facilities for providing the company’s scientific consumables and supplies.
The lab will be used to demo the Intuvo 9000 Gas Chromatography System as well as related sample preparation and GC column consumables.
Large manufacturing site for capillary GC columns
The facility is one of the largest manufacturing sites of capillary GC columns, which are used in the Intuvo 9000 GC system.
“[It] also develops a variety of sample preparation products, including QuEChERS products for pesticide testing in a variety of food matrices, and Enhanced Matrix Removal (EMR) sample preparation technology to eliminate matrix interferences in food samples,” said Ellis.
“These products enable lower-levels of detection and greater confidence in results. Furthermore, Folsom manufactures a number of critical instrument components used in Agilent’s HPLC and GC system product offerings.”
Many of the flow-path hardware parts for the Intuvo GC system will be manufactured at the site, as well as the GC column modules.
Agilent Technologies systems are used by laboratories in areas such as testing the quality and safety of food, water and pharmaceuticals.
Henrik Ancher-Jensen, Agilent president of order fulfilment and supply chain, said: “This new facility expands Agilent’s capabilities for chromatography consumables and hardware, which are used in laboratories around the world and for critical health, safety and product quality decisions.”
Agilent has demo laboratory facilities at a number of sites globally which will continue to be used in addition to the Folsom Technology Center.
The largest ones in the US are in Santa Clara, California and Little Falls, Delaware.