OGDEN — A manufacturer of scientific lab equipment is opening up shop in Ogden and plans to hire hundreds of new employees at its new site over the next year.

Ogden City announced Tuesday that Thermo Fisher Scientific will be opening a new facility at the Boyer Business Depot Ogden, hiring 450 employees by 2022.

According to its website, Thermo Fisher makes scientific instruments, equipment and software for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academia, government, environmental and industrial research, and for use in clinical laboratories. The company has annual revenues of more than $30 billion. At its Ogden location, the company will manufacture “single-use bioprocess containers,” which hold liquids used in the manufacturing process for COVID-19 vaccines and other therapeutics.

According to a city news release, Thermo Fisher’s BDO facility will be 55,000 square feet and represents a $44 million capital investment by the company.

Ogden Mayor Mike Caldwell called the company’s move to Junction City “a great win for our community’s economic and employment growth.”

Caleb Jones, who will serve as Thermo Fisher’s director of operations at the Ogden site, said the company is currently accepting applications for employment at jobs.thermofisher.com. He said the company will begin production at the BDO by September.

The company already has a presence in Utah, employing some 1,600 people at three different sites in Cache Valley.

The 1,118-acre BDO business park has more than 6,500 employees, 130 businesses and over 12.5 million square feet of warehousing, manufacturing and office space with an additional 225 acres of ground available for new development. When the last building is put up, park officials estimate the number of employees will total more than 10,000 — growth somewhere in the neighborhood of 60%.

When the old Defense Depot Ogden closed at the site in 1997 after a Department of Defense base realignment and closure round, the federal government deeded Ogden City all of the land and facilities associated with the old military installation for free. The city ultimately entered into a partnership with Salt Lake City-based real estate developer the Boyer Co., which included a $12 million bond (about $30 million in 2021 dollars) that funded initial infrastructure improvements and the creation of the DDO Redevelopment Area, which froze the facility’s tax valuation and put the revenue generated from property tax increases back into the development.

Since the initial deal was made, the bond has been paid off and the tax increment collection period expired in 2019.

Ogden City receives about $1.5 million per year from the site in the form of property tax revenue. And the city still collects lease revenue from tenants at the BDO. After expenses, Ogden and the Boyer group split BDO lease revenue 50-50. Ogden takes in about $8 million per year there, a figure that doesn’t include the tax revenue.