On December 23, 2020, the Department of Defense (DOD), in coordination with Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), awarded a $15 million Firm Fixed Price contract to Corning Incorporated to expand domestic production of pipette tips for robotic liquid handling instruments.
This industrial base expansion effort will allow Corning Life Sciences to increase production capacity of pipette tips for robotic liquid handling instruments at their Durham, North Carolina, facility by an additional 684 million pipette tips per year by October 2021.
These tips can be used in a number of research and diagnostic applications, most notably in support of domestic COVID-19 testing.
The DOD's Defense Assisted Acquisition (DA2) Cell led this effort in coordination with the Department of the Air Force's Acquisition COVID-19 Task Force (DAF ACT).
This effort was funded through Health Care Enhancement Act (HCEA) to enable and support domestic industrial base expansion for critical medical resources.
