G-CON Manufacturing Inc. has been honored with the Brazos Valley Economic Development Corporation’s first Launch Award as part of the 2018 Bryan Rotary Club Business Performance Awards, held Wednesday, July 11 at the College Station Hilton.
“Receiving this award is a source of tremendous pride to our young firm and shows the dedication of each of the team members and our employees to the success of this bold project. It also validates our cleanroom design principles for rapidly deployable, flexible and repurposable manufacturing infrastructures,” said Maik Jornitz, the CEO of G-Con Manufacturing.
The Launch Award honors an independent, privately-held corporation, proprietorship or partnership headquartered in Brazos County. It recognizes the company's scale of operations since startup toward second-stage growth. In existence less than five years, the company must have demonstrated distinguished industry achievement of technology products and service that validates its potential. The company must have improved or transformed the region's marketplace in target industry sectors, including advanced manufacturing, agricultural sciences, biotech, engineering, R&D and professional services.
There is enormous growth in the biopharmaceutical and pharmaceutical industries. Instead of companies using large facilities with large price tags and large hurdles to adapt them, G-CON Manufacturing provides prefabricated cleanroom modules, or PODs. The flexible, movable and interconnectable spaces give companies the chance to more easily alter their own playing fields. The “plug and play” environments can be arranged in a variety of ways. They feature their own air-handling units, fire suppression and a process control system. Electricity, water, steam and other utilities can be sent from host facilities to an entry point on the POD. Construction time is a fraction of what it would take on a standard facility.
The drive to create a new, higher standard showed when eight people worked to create six PODs for the National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing at Texas A&M. Word of the work spread quickly. The year 2014 marked G-CON Manufacturing Inc.’s establishment, Pfizer becoming a customer and investor, and the start of a boom in business. GlaxoSmithKline, AveXis, Lonza and more industry leaders can now speak to the quality of the PODs. G-CON Manufacturing now owns its campus, plus 8.8 acres alongside on which a new facility is planned for construction. The company has already added 25,000 square feet of manufacturing space. Fifty-five employees work in College Station and locations across the country.
“Our founders saw the pharmaceutical industry’s changing requirements early on and developed a solution to meet those demands,” said Sid Backstrom, G-CON Manufacturing’s vice president of business management. “Since then, through the leadership of our board, the hiring of the right industry expertise and a little bit of Texas grit, we have seen our company grow in size and expertise to the point where we are an industry leader in the cleanroom arena.”
Each year, the Bryan Rotary Club honors the ten fastest growing firms in Brazos County. Starting this year, the BVEDC’s Launch Award joins the ANCO Lifetime Achievement Award as honors also handed out during the Business Performance Awards event.
“We congratulate the G-CON team on receiving the inaugural Launch Award,” said BVEDC President/CEO Matt Prochaska. “They exemplify what the best of the best looks like in the Brazos Valley: innovation, high growth, global reach and service within their sector. We also appreciate the Bryan Rotary Club and their commitment to supporting our local business community.”
Photo (from left to right): BVEDC Board Chairman Glen Davis, G-CON Manufacturing President/CEO Maik Jornitz, G-CON Manufacturing Vice President of Business Management Sid Backstrom, G-CON Manufacturing Director of Marketing Brittany Berryman