RAYMOND – Employees at HaloSource Inc. in Raymond leave views of the picturesque Willapa River behind as they enter a sterile workplace to produce the company’s newest product, a pad to control bleeding.
They must go through a series of steps. They carefully wash their hands, step on a sticky pad to remove residue from their shoes and don white booties, hairnets and lab coats before entering controlled environment rooms that ensure strict guidelines are met for air quality control.
The air in the building is filtered to reduce particles in both the walkways and the clean rooms. A particle counting machine monitors the internal environment.
This sterile world is in stark contrast to the prior function of the building and it represents exciting improvements for the global, Washington-based health science technologies company.
“It’s nice to have all those quality controls that ensure you’re going to have clean air,” said Danny Perry, the Raymond plant’s project manager. “It locks us into a level of quality that is, frankly, what it takes to do that kind of work.”
Previously, the building – one of five the company has leased from the Port of Willapa Harbor since the early 1980s – was used to grind crustacean shells used in the company’s chitin and chitosan-based products, said Devon Brown, the plant manager.
HaloSource Inc., and its predecessor companies have operated in Raymond for 25 years, but its products are breaking new ground.
“It used to be very dusty in there,” Brown said. “To make biomedical products, we have to have a very clean environment.”
HaloSource completed improvements to the buildings in June. They began construction a year ago.
The company, which creates new technology and manufactures products for the water treatment, infection control and wound-healing industries, is based in Redmond, where a majority of the company’s research and development activities are conducted. Besides the Raymond facility, it has a manufacturing plant in Florida.
The 30,000-square-foot Raymond facility has a pilot plant that does some development work and produces potential new products on a larger scale, Brown said. The site is also used to manufacture the company’s biomedical products, pool and spa products and water treatment products. One of the buildings, which used to be mainly a warehouse, now consists of a large manufacturing space.
While the new facilities didn’t create a need for new employees, the improvements to the biomedical facility have the potential to increase the production of the company’s HemoHalt product – the medical pad that stops bleeding quickly – four times over, Brown said.
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