Fishers microsphere manufacturer doubling in size

Bangs Laboratories is in the final months of a roughly $7 million expansion that will more than double the size of its Fishers headquarters, creating up to 25 jobs and allowing the company to expand its product line.

Bangs acquired the office building directly west of its 18,000-square-foot headquarters, at 9001 Technology Drive, in spring 2016 and then cleared the site to make room for a 22,000-square-foot addition to its headquarters. Work on the new office, laboratory, manufacturing, packaging and shipping space started in earnest last May.

President Chad Owen plans to launch the company’s new suite of advanced manufacturing and clean rooms in early March.

“We’ve had steady growth over the last couple decades, really,” Owen said. “We’ve had consistent 10% [revenue] growth year-over-year.”

The advanced manufacturing and life sciences company creates uniform specialty polymer, silica and magnetic microspheres for use in diagnostic instruments.

Owen said most people are able to better understand what Bangs Laboratories does when they consider an at-home pregnancy test.

Within an at-home pregnancy test, there are often blue or red microspheres attached to an antibody. Those antibodies are designed to bind to a hormone that’s only produced during pregnancy. When a sample is mixed with the microspheres, they travel up the test strip and produce a line indicating a positive or negative result.

Owen said the expansion initially will add three to five people to Bangs’ employee headcount of 30. He said another 20 positions might be added eventually. He said those jobs could pay between $50,000 and $100,000.

Bangs was founded in 1988 by Leigh and Sonia Bangs. Pennsylvania-based Polysciences Inc. acquired the company in 2003 and operates Bangs Laboratories alongside another wholly owned subsidiary, New Jersey-based Astral Diagnostics Inc.