Minnesota Rubber and Plastics is holding a ribbon-cutting event tomorrow at its 9,000-square-foot Innovation Center adjacent to its headquarters, northwest of Minneapolis in the suburb of Plymouth.

The event caps off a $7 million, nine-month construction project. The new Innovation Center is meant to boost collaboration on design, production-intent prototyping, comprehensive testing, and manufacturing and deployment readiness — all under one roof.

Karthik Viswanathan, MRP’s VP of product development, noted in an October news release that processes that once took months will be cut down to weeks.

Minnesota Rubber and Plastics is incorporated under the name Quadion. It makes engineered elastomers and thermoplastics for the medical, water and industrial markets.

MRP has played an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic. It boosted its production of components that go into hospital ventilators and manufactured parts for COVID-19 testing kits, as well as vaccine and antibody delivery systems.

“All of these types of medicines pass through some form of our drug delivery or fluid connector type products,” Viswanathan said.