Boston Scientific will permanently close a facility in the San Francisco Bay region of California, resulting in the layoffs of dozens of workers there.
The medtech giant disclosed the planned closure in a filing with California’s Employment Development Department, as required by the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification act. The WARN notice was dated June 12 but not received by the EDD until this week, per the agency’s database.
The facility in question is located in Fremont, California. Boston Scientific seems to have moved into the space only recently, as real estate news outlet The Real Deal reported just last September that the company had leased the 138,343-square-foot building, citing public records.
In total, 52 workers will be affected by the closure. According to the WARN notice, shared with Fierce Medtech by the EDD, that will include 47 Boston Scientific employees and five independent consultants stationed at the Fremont facility.
The layoffs are slated to begin Aug. 11 and stretch through the first quarter of next year. Boston Scientific said in the notice that all affected workers will be notified of their individual termination dates 60 days in advance and that the 47 non-consultant employees will also be able to apply to other roles elsewhere within the company.
With the facility’s closure, the devicemaker plans to move the work that was conducted there to other company outposts in Minnesota.
"Transferring work among our facilities helps us align our products, capabilities, technologies and resources to best support our business strategies, meet market demands and improve our operating performance while delivering value, along with life-changing medical solutions, to our customers and their patients," Boston Scientific said in a statement sent to Fierce Medtech.
The work being transferred from the Fremont facility centers on the production of the Wolf thrombectomy platform. Boston Scientific noted in the statement that it had initially informed employees of the upcoming transfer some time ago, after closing its acquisition of Fremont-based Devoro Medical in November 2021.
The closure and its related layoffs echo the shutdown of another of Boston Scientific’s facilities in the Silicon Valley region less than two years ago.
In December 2021, the company filed another WARN notice with California, this time detailing the permanent closure of its manufacturing facility in San Jose. That change resulted in the loss of 170 jobs, and the layoffs and facility shutdown were expected to take effect by the end of January 2022.
More recently, earlier this year, Boston Scientific filed yet another WARN notice. This one went to Texas’ Workforce Commission and described how the company would be transferring some work from a Houston facility to its Arden Hills, Minnesota, location—triggering 120 permanent layoffs scheduled to take effect between April 23 and June 25.
That transfer had been in the works since April 2022, according to Boston Scientific, as the company decided to consolidate manufacturing of wearable heart monitors following its early 2021 acquisition of Preventice Solutions—the original owner of the Houston facility.
Editor's note: This story was updated July 20 with a statement from Boston Scientific.