DeSoto ? What started as a small livestock farm near DeSoto has turned into a 300-acre, $35 million research and production facility for the world’s largest animal vaccine producer.

Intervet Inc. has plans to employ 180 people at its new DeSoto facility by mid-2003, Steven Ellsworth, the company’s vice president of technical affairs, said Friday.

Members of the K-10 Assn., an economic development group promoting growth along Kansas Highway 10 between Lawrence and Overland Park, toured the facility on Friday and learned why the Netherlands-based company decided to build a manufacturing plant in this town of approximately 4,500 people about 18 miles east of Lawrence.

For years, the 300-acre site just west of DeSoto High School had been owned by the pharmaceutical giant Bayer. The company used a small portion of the land to house livestock used to test animal vaccines made at the company’s nearby Shawnee facility.

In 2000, Intervet bought the U.S. vaccine operations of Bayer, and with it came the 300-acre parcel of ground near DeSoto. Shortly after the Bayer purchase, Intervet officials realized they needed a larger facility than the former Bayer site in Shawnee.

That’s when company officials realized their inherited livestock farm might be the right place to build a three-building, $35 million facility that produces and researches vaccines used for cattle, swine and horses.

“We liked what we saw here,” Ellsworth said. “We thought the transportation network would serve our business very well, and we thought it was an area where we could find good, quality workers.”

Many of the jobs at the company are relatively high-tech in nature, with most of the research and quality-control positions requiring advanced degrees in microbiology, veterinary medicine, immunology or other related fields.

The new Intervet facility in DeSoto is expected to employ 180 people by mid-2003. The company produces a variety of vaccines used by the livestock industry.

Ellsworth said about 135 of the 180 DeSoto jobs would be filled by former Bayer employees from the Shawnee facility.

DeSoto city officials think the project will provide an economic boon to the community.

“It is a great project for us,” DeSoto Mayor David Anderson said. “It will really help boost our tax base and it should cause our residential market to expand quite a bit because we’re talking about almost 200 employees.

“We know not all of them will live here, but we think it may add 60 or 70 new families to town.”

The company, which is a subsidiary of the Netherlands-based firm Akzo Nobel, began moving into the facility in May. About 100 people now work at the plant, which is expected to manufacture about 25 vaccines by mid-2003.