07.20.22
Rank: #14 (Last year: #13)
$9.05 Billion ($35.4B total)
Prior Fiscal: $8.34 Billion
Percentage Change: +8.45%
R&D Expenditure: $1.99B
Best FY21 Quarter: Q2 $2.27B
Latest Quarter: Q1 $2.12B
No. of Employees: 95,000 (total)
Global Headquarters: St. Paul, Minn.
KEY EXECUTIVES:
Michael F. Roman, Board Chairman and CEO
Karina Chavez, Sr. VP and Chief Strategy Officer
Monish Patolawala, Exec. VP, Chief Financial and Transformation Officer
Mojdeh Poul, Group President, Health Care Business Group
Kevin H. Rhodes, Exec. VP, Chief Legal Affairs Officer
John P. Banovetz, Exec. VP, Chief Technology Officer and Environmental Responsibility
Eric D. Hammes, Exec. VP, Chief Country Governance and Services Officer
Mark Murphy, Exec. VP, Chief Information and Digital Officer
Aberdeen, S.D., stretches for 16.6 miles in the northeastern part of the Coyote State, scattered amid the pancake-flat fields of the fertile James River valley. It’s attracted 28,495 residents at last count (2020)—a paltry sum, certainly, compared with more urbanized areas, but nevertheless substantial by local standards (it is outranked in population only by Sioux Falls and Rapid City).
Founded shortly after Independence Day 1881, Aberdeen was named after a centuries-old metropolis in northeastern Scotland but earned the nickname “Hub City of the Dakotas” for its four intersecting railroad lines.
Among its more renowned inhabitants was “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” author L. Frank Baum, who moved there with his family in 1888 and opened a general store (Baum’s Bazaar). He also edited one of the city’s nine newspapers, and organized its first baseball club (it disbanded after one season). Baum reportedly immortalized Aberdeen in “Oz” via the Kansas setting and the Emerald City’s penchant for all things green. The Wizard’s edict, for example, that Emerald City residents wear green goggles to perpetuate the myth their burg was made of emeralds is similar (same idea) to a newspaper column Baum wrote about a farmer whose green goggle-wearing horses thought the wood chips they ate were grass.
Baum moved to Chicago in 1891 but he is still beloved in Aberdeen, which has memorialized him in both work and play. The Land of Oz amusement park (within Storybook Land) features all the hallmarks of Baum’s iconic tale (even talking trees!), while the former city logo—a wordmark with a quill pen icon—clearly was “a tip of the hat” to the famous author, according to Aberdeen Mayor Travis Schaunaman. “That logo was paired with the slogan, ‘Write Your Story,’ suggesting that people come to Aberdeen to create their own future here,” the mayor wrote in an August 2019 op-ed column in The Aberdeen News. “We should be proud of having been home to one of the greatest storytellers in history...”
Proud, indeed. But pride in the quill pen logo faded quickly after more than a decade of use, prompting city officials to adopt a new marketing slogan last summer: Changing the Game. The strong A in the logo denotes “wide-open sky, sweeping prairie grass, and agriculture,” and acknowledges Aberdeen’s “distinct geographic independence” that makes it the “Hub City,” according to rebranding information.
“We circled back to the fact that Aberdeen is always willing to change the game,” Tiffany Langer, who developed the new slogan and logo, told reporters in May 2020. “We’re always re-imagining ourselves.”
Aberdeen’s most recent re-creation came courtesy of the coronavirus pandemic, as it turned the Hub City into an epicenter of N95 respirator manufacturing. Aberdeen is home to a 3M manufacturing plant—one of numerous facilities worldwide that make the Aura flat-fold respirator.
3M’s Aberdeen plant began 24/7 respirator manufacturing operations in January 2020 and added both staff (hundreds of workers from 27 states) and production capacity as COVID-19 intensified to maximize its monthly mask output to 95 million. A U.S. Defense Department partnership and 3M investments increased the Aberdeen facility’s dimensions by 120,000 square feet.
The additional staff and space enabled plant workers to produce 1 billion N95 respirators in an extraordinarily short amount of time—just 20 months after the original ramp-up and 28 months earlier than it normally would have taken.
“I’m really proud of our team here and how they’ve been able to react and step up to the plate,” (Aberdeen) Plant Director Andy Rehder said last August. “I’m grateful for the sacrifices people made working 24/7 to help get frontline workers the PPE they use while helping care for others. It’s motivating to the team to know they’ve made a difference.”
The team made a difference in more ways than one. Besides maintaining front-line workers’ respirator supply, the Aberdeen 3M manufacturing team also helped build a solid financial foundation the company’s Health Care Business last year. Sales rose 8.6 percent to $9.05 billion, driven by higher revenue in oral care, separation and purification, food safety, health information systems, and medical solutions.
Oral care growth came from improved dental procedure volume, while separation and purification sales benefitted from high demand for biopharma filtration solutions within COVID-19-related vaccine and therapeutic development and manufacturing.
Demand for such solutions could spike considerably this year thanks to a global agreement 3M Separation and Purification Sciences forged last fall with Thermo Fisher Scientific; the pact allows biopharmaceutical manufacturers to pair the two companies’ technologies with each other.
The agreement lets manufacturers pair 3M’s Harvest RC Chromatographic Clarifier, a single-stage purification solution, with Thermo Fisher Scientific’s HyPerforma Single-Use Bioreactor systems. Combining these two technologies can bring greater efficiency and scalability to the therapeutic manufacturing process.
Released in June 2021, 3M’s Harvest RC uses proprietary fibrous chromatography media to deliver a single-stage purification solution for recombinant protein therapeutic manufacturing. It streamlines a traditionally multi-stage harvest classification process into a single stage.
Thermo Fisher’s HyPerforma Single-Use Bioreactor is available in 50L to 5,000L sizes, with the 5,000L model being the largest commercially available unit. That size enables biopharmaceutical companies to integrate single-use technologies into large-scale bioprocesses, including perfusion cell culture and cGMP manufacturing at a very high cell density.
3M’s alliance with Thermo Fisher was one of several collaborations executed by the company last year. In June, the firm teamed up with the Pandemic Action Network to improve the world’s COVID-19 mitigation plans and better prepare for future pandemics. The Network advocates for policy changes as well as increased support and resources to ensure countries are better prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to pandemic threats.
“With the mass roll-out of vaccines and the U.S. CDC’s guidance on masking, many people are understandably hopeful that the worst is behind us—but the COVID-19 pandemic is not over and now is not the time to let our guard down,” Gabrielle Fitzgerald, CEO of Panorama Global and Pandemic Action Network co-founder, said. “We must act on lessons learned and continue to promote and inspire healthy behaviors while ensuring the world is better prepared for pandemic threats. Through our partnership with 3M, we will mobilize public support and catalyze action until the world has fully crushed this pandemic.”
Roughly a week after announcing the Pandemic Action Network alliance, 3M worked with the U.S. Marshals Service in Kentucky to block the sale of more than 1 million fake N95 respirators.
Since the pandemic began, 3M has seized more than 41 million counterfeit N95 respirators in collaboration with law enforcement and customs agencies worldwide. Facemasks were among the top-selling items last year in 3M Health Care’s medical solutions franchise, which profited from rising elective procedure volumes in the H1 2021 and strong N95 respirator demand in Q1.
3M added to its medical solutions portfolio last spring with a new silicone adhesive that balances strength, flexibility, and comfort. The 2484 3M Single Coated Medical Film Tape with Hi-Tack Silicone Adhesive on Liner is breathable and comfortable, can be worn for up to seven days, and is gentle on skin (it minimizes skin cell removal). The adhesive can be sterilized with ethylene oxide and is compliant with ISO 10993 parts 5 and 10.
Around the same time 3M debuted the new adhesive, the company launched a new technology platform to help healthcare providers and payers prioritize care for high-risk populations. The Social Determinants of Health Analytics combines clinical, social, and population health data to create a complete patient health picture. The platform uses 3M’s population classification system and includes social risk intelligence to promote program design and management in tandem with community-based organizations.
3M’s population classification system—Clinical Risk Groups—helps identify medically complex individuals. The Social Determinants tool builds on this data to describe a population’s total disease burden.
“We are transforming 3M by accelerating our digital capabilities, and expanding our use of data and analytics to better serve our customers,” Chairman and CEO Michael F. Roman wrote in the company’s 2021 annual report. “The world is changing rapidly, and we will continue to capitalize on opportunities across our businesses that are sizable and significant.”
One of those opportunities occurred last December and resulted in 3M merging its food safety business with Neogen Corp. in a tax-free reverse Morris trust transaction. The deal gives the unit a $5.3 billion enterprise value (including $1 million in new debt) and funnels about $1 billion to 3M’s coffers.
Food safety was part of 3M’s broader Health Care business. It contributed roughly 5% to Health Care sales and just 1% to 3M’s total sales in 2019. 3M plans to use its $1 billion payout from the food safety divestiture to fund its dividend and pay down debt, which fell 7.6% last year to $17.36 billion, or 49% of the company’s total 2021 sales. Revenue rose 9.8% in FY21 to $35.35 billion, driven by double-digit increases in all four business segments.
$9.05 Billion ($35.4B total)
Prior Fiscal: $8.34 Billion
Percentage Change: +8.45%
R&D Expenditure: $1.99B
Best FY21 Quarter: Q2 $2.27B
Latest Quarter: Q1 $2.12B
No. of Employees: 95,000 (total)
Global Headquarters: St. Paul, Minn.
KEY EXECUTIVES:
Michael F. Roman, Board Chairman and CEO
Karina Chavez, Sr. VP and Chief Strategy Officer
Monish Patolawala, Exec. VP, Chief Financial and Transformation Officer
Mojdeh Poul, Group President, Health Care Business Group
Kevin H. Rhodes, Exec. VP, Chief Legal Affairs Officer
John P. Banovetz, Exec. VP, Chief Technology Officer and Environmental Responsibility
Eric D. Hammes, Exec. VP, Chief Country Governance and Services Officer
Mark Murphy, Exec. VP, Chief Information and Digital Officer
Aberdeen, S.D., stretches for 16.6 miles in the northeastern part of the Coyote State, scattered amid the pancake-flat fields of the fertile James River valley. It’s attracted 28,495 residents at last count (2020)—a paltry sum, certainly, compared with more urbanized areas, but nevertheless substantial by local standards (it is outranked in population only by Sioux Falls and Rapid City).
Founded shortly after Independence Day 1881, Aberdeen was named after a centuries-old metropolis in northeastern Scotland but earned the nickname “Hub City of the Dakotas” for its four intersecting railroad lines.
Among its more renowned inhabitants was “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” author L. Frank Baum, who moved there with his family in 1888 and opened a general store (Baum’s Bazaar). He also edited one of the city’s nine newspapers, and organized its first baseball club (it disbanded after one season). Baum reportedly immortalized Aberdeen in “Oz” via the Kansas setting and the Emerald City’s penchant for all things green. The Wizard’s edict, for example, that Emerald City residents wear green goggles to perpetuate the myth their burg was made of emeralds is similar (same idea) to a newspaper column Baum wrote about a farmer whose green goggle-wearing horses thought the wood chips they ate were grass.
Baum moved to Chicago in 1891 but he is still beloved in Aberdeen, which has memorialized him in both work and play. The Land of Oz amusement park (within Storybook Land) features all the hallmarks of Baum’s iconic tale (even talking trees!), while the former city logo—a wordmark with a quill pen icon—clearly was “a tip of the hat” to the famous author, according to Aberdeen Mayor Travis Schaunaman. “That logo was paired with the slogan, ‘Write Your Story,’ suggesting that people come to Aberdeen to create their own future here,” the mayor wrote in an August 2019 op-ed column in The Aberdeen News. “We should be proud of having been home to one of the greatest storytellers in history...”
Proud, indeed. But pride in the quill pen logo faded quickly after more than a decade of use, prompting city officials to adopt a new marketing slogan last summer: Changing the Game. The strong A in the logo denotes “wide-open sky, sweeping prairie grass, and agriculture,” and acknowledges Aberdeen’s “distinct geographic independence” that makes it the “Hub City,” according to rebranding information.
“We circled back to the fact that Aberdeen is always willing to change the game,” Tiffany Langer, who developed the new slogan and logo, told reporters in May 2020. “We’re always re-imagining ourselves.”
Aberdeen’s most recent re-creation came courtesy of the coronavirus pandemic, as it turned the Hub City into an epicenter of N95 respirator manufacturing. Aberdeen is home to a 3M manufacturing plant—one of numerous facilities worldwide that make the Aura flat-fold respirator.
3M’s Aberdeen plant began 24/7 respirator manufacturing operations in January 2020 and added both staff (hundreds of workers from 27 states) and production capacity as COVID-19 intensified to maximize its monthly mask output to 95 million. A U.S. Defense Department partnership and 3M investments increased the Aberdeen facility’s dimensions by 120,000 square feet.
The additional staff and space enabled plant workers to produce 1 billion N95 respirators in an extraordinarily short amount of time—just 20 months after the original ramp-up and 28 months earlier than it normally would have taken.
“I’m really proud of our team here and how they’ve been able to react and step up to the plate,” (Aberdeen) Plant Director Andy Rehder said last August. “I’m grateful for the sacrifices people made working 24/7 to help get frontline workers the PPE they use while helping care for others. It’s motivating to the team to know they’ve made a difference.”
The team made a difference in more ways than one. Besides maintaining front-line workers’ respirator supply, the Aberdeen 3M manufacturing team also helped build a solid financial foundation the company’s Health Care Business last year. Sales rose 8.6 percent to $9.05 billion, driven by higher revenue in oral care, separation and purification, food safety, health information systems, and medical solutions.
Oral care growth came from improved dental procedure volume, while separation and purification sales benefitted from high demand for biopharma filtration solutions within COVID-19-related vaccine and therapeutic development and manufacturing.
Demand for such solutions could spike considerably this year thanks to a global agreement 3M Separation and Purification Sciences forged last fall with Thermo Fisher Scientific; the pact allows biopharmaceutical manufacturers to pair the two companies’ technologies with each other.
The agreement lets manufacturers pair 3M’s Harvest RC Chromatographic Clarifier, a single-stage purification solution, with Thermo Fisher Scientific’s HyPerforma Single-Use Bioreactor systems. Combining these two technologies can bring greater efficiency and scalability to the therapeutic manufacturing process.
Released in June 2021, 3M’s Harvest RC uses proprietary fibrous chromatography media to deliver a single-stage purification solution for recombinant protein therapeutic manufacturing. It streamlines a traditionally multi-stage harvest classification process into a single stage.
Thermo Fisher’s HyPerforma Single-Use Bioreactor is available in 50L to 5,000L sizes, with the 5,000L model being the largest commercially available unit. That size enables biopharmaceutical companies to integrate single-use technologies into large-scale bioprocesses, including perfusion cell culture and cGMP manufacturing at a very high cell density.
3M’s alliance with Thermo Fisher was one of several collaborations executed by the company last year. In June, the firm teamed up with the Pandemic Action Network to improve the world’s COVID-19 mitigation plans and better prepare for future pandemics. The Network advocates for policy changes as well as increased support and resources to ensure countries are better prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to pandemic threats.
“With the mass roll-out of vaccines and the U.S. CDC’s guidance on masking, many people are understandably hopeful that the worst is behind us—but the COVID-19 pandemic is not over and now is not the time to let our guard down,” Gabrielle Fitzgerald, CEO of Panorama Global and Pandemic Action Network co-founder, said. “We must act on lessons learned and continue to promote and inspire healthy behaviors while ensuring the world is better prepared for pandemic threats. Through our partnership with 3M, we will mobilize public support and catalyze action until the world has fully crushed this pandemic.”
Roughly a week after announcing the Pandemic Action Network alliance, 3M worked with the U.S. Marshals Service in Kentucky to block the sale of more than 1 million fake N95 respirators.
Since the pandemic began, 3M has seized more than 41 million counterfeit N95 respirators in collaboration with law enforcement and customs agencies worldwide. Facemasks were among the top-selling items last year in 3M Health Care’s medical solutions franchise, which profited from rising elective procedure volumes in the H1 2021 and strong N95 respirator demand in Q1.
3M added to its medical solutions portfolio last spring with a new silicone adhesive that balances strength, flexibility, and comfort. The 2484 3M Single Coated Medical Film Tape with Hi-Tack Silicone Adhesive on Liner is breathable and comfortable, can be worn for up to seven days, and is gentle on skin (it minimizes skin cell removal). The adhesive can be sterilized with ethylene oxide and is compliant with ISO 10993 parts 5 and 10.
Around the same time 3M debuted the new adhesive, the company launched a new technology platform to help healthcare providers and payers prioritize care for high-risk populations. The Social Determinants of Health Analytics combines clinical, social, and population health data to create a complete patient health picture. The platform uses 3M’s population classification system and includes social risk intelligence to promote program design and management in tandem with community-based organizations.
3M’s population classification system—Clinical Risk Groups—helps identify medically complex individuals. The Social Determinants tool builds on this data to describe a population’s total disease burden.
“We are transforming 3M by accelerating our digital capabilities, and expanding our use of data and analytics to better serve our customers,” Chairman and CEO Michael F. Roman wrote in the company’s 2021 annual report. “The world is changing rapidly, and we will continue to capitalize on opportunities across our businesses that are sizable and significant.”
One of those opportunities occurred last December and resulted in 3M merging its food safety business with Neogen Corp. in a tax-free reverse Morris trust transaction. The deal gives the unit a $5.3 billion enterprise value (including $1 million in new debt) and funnels about $1 billion to 3M’s coffers.
Food safety was part of 3M’s broader Health Care business. It contributed roughly 5% to Health Care sales and just 1% to 3M’s total sales in 2019. 3M plans to use its $1 billion payout from the food safety divestiture to fund its dividend and pay down debt, which fell 7.6% last year to $17.36 billion, or 49% of the company’s total 2021 sales. Revenue rose 9.8% in FY21 to $35.35 billion, driven by double-digit increases in all four business segments.