Another foreign company is headed for Howard County. Perlarom, S.A., a Belgian manufacturer of food and beverage flavorings, said this week it has selected Columbia for a new research and development facility.
"We looked at sites in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland. This site was the one that offered exactly what we were looking for," David R. Bowen, president and chief executive officer of Perlarom's U.S. operation, said from the company's sales headquarters in White Plains, N.Y.
"We needed a free-standing building in a prestigious area on the East Coast that we could get into fairly quickly," he said.
When it opens April 1, Perlarom will join about 70 other foreign-owned companies that have set up shop in Howard County, said Richard Story, director of the Howard County Economic Development Authority, a private-public partnership that leads job retention and growth efforts.
Howard County has the second-highest concentration of foreign-owned companies in Maryland, behind Montgomery County, which has more than 100. Many of the foreign companies have come to the two counties in the past five years.
Mr. Bowen said Perlarom will have 10 employees initially at its new Columbia facility in the Oakland Ridge Industrial Park on Red Branch Road, but that the number should increase to about 20 in about a year.
The company intends to hire most of its Columbia employees locally, he said.
It will be looking for laboratory workers with experience in food technology.
Most will be involved with the company's efforts to develop and improve customized flavors and flavor enhancers for food and beverage manufacturers.
Perlarom develops and manufactures flavorings for customers in seven countries. In the United States, said Mr. Bowen, most of the company's customers are on the East Coast and Midwest.
Mr. Bowen said the company has leased 15,300 square feet of space for the new facility in Columbia and has an option to buy the site so that it can expand. About 7,000 square feet of the site will be used initially for research; the rest is for warehouse needs.
If sales remain strong in the United States, he said, the company plans to set up a manufacturing facility at the same location.
"That's about two or three years down the road, but we'd like to see it happen," the chief executive said.
Perlarom, based in Louvain La Neuve, Belgium, reported $45 million in worldwide sales last year.