The carpet is in. The cubicles are assembled. The office furniture is set up and the computers are networked.

Two weeks from now, an office suite at Airport Commerce Park West will come to life when Eurofins Scientific Inc., one of Europe’s fastest-growing companies, completes the move of its North America headquarters from Memphis, Tenn., to Des Moines.

The new Des Moines headquarters will serve as the base for the company’s food-testing operations, as well as provide shared accounting, information technology and human resources functions for all of its U.S. operations. Eurofins operates laboratories in six U.S. cities, including a Des Moines facility at 3507 Delaware Ave. that employs 54 people.

The move into leased space is just an interim step for the company, which plans to build or buy a headquarters complex in Greater Des Moines that will house up to 150 employees, plus state-of-the-art testing laboratories.

The Brussels, Belgium-based life sciences company, which anticipates 2006 revenues of approximately $450 million, provides a comprehensive array of analytical services to test the purity, origin, safety and other characteristics of products for its clients, which include companies in the food, pharmaceutical, dietary supplement, biotech, feed and animal health industries.

Eurofins employs more than 5,000 people and operates from more than 70 laboratories in 20 countries. Its U.S. operations, with more than 400 employees, are expected to generate approximately $65 million in sales this year.

Eurofins has already hired most of its Des Moines headquarters staff, and is seeking to recruit key scientists who will work in a new laboratory that’s under construction in an adjoining leased space. By March 1, the company expects to have the laboratory completed and a combined work force of about 50 newly hired scientists and support staff in place.

The need to ensure uninterrupted service to its clients is “why we’re taking the steps to build (the temporary laboratory),” said Marc Scantlin, who was recently hired by Eurofins as its vice president of human resources and organizational development.

“When you build something new, it takes a tremendous amount of time. Even if we were to start tomorrow with (construction), we would obviously continue with the development of this location,” he said. “It could be as soon as next year that we start development of (the permanent headquarters), but we’re also patient with it and want to find the right location.”

David Maahs, executive vice president of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, said Eurofins’ selection of Des Moines for its headquarters “further cements our place as a leader in the life sciences.” Greater Des Moines is already home to two significant life sciences companies, Kemin Industries Inc. and Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc.

“This is going to be a great project for the region,” Maahs said. “Our track record of recruiting and retaining scientific talent was a factor in the selection of the Des Moines area as their headquarters.”

In addition to working with Eurofins in its real estate search, the Partnership is also assisting the company in applying for both state and local economic development incentives, he said.

Scantlin said the company has been shifting its U.S. operations away from geographic divisions to more functional organization, with a division president overseeing each of its major product testing areas. The president of the food testing division, who is yet to be hired, will be based in Des Moines and will also be responsible for all U.S. shared-services operations.

Once a permanent Des Moines headquarters is established, the company plans to move its Delaware Avenue laboratory to that site, Scantlin said. The company also plans to relocate its vitamin testing operations to Des Moines from its current location in Petaluma, Calif.

“It’s a very delicate transition,” he said, “and we have to make it as seamless as possible for our clients so that there is zero impact for them.”

Eurofins has had a presence in Iowa since June 2000, when it acquired Woodson-Tenent Laboratories Inc., a Memphis-based food testing company that has operated a Des Moines laboratory since 1955.

Ardin Backous, a former Woodson-Tenent owner who manages Eurofins’ food-testing business, said he’s confident all 54 employees of the current laboratory will be able to keep their jobs.

“They will actually have more security than they have ever had before, now that the decision has been made for everything to come to Des Moines,” Backous said. The laboratory, which primarily conducts pet food testing, will shift to performing mostly human nutrition testing once it moves to the permanent headquarters building, he said.

Des Moines was selected over Washington, D.C., for the company’s base of U.S. operations primarily because of the quality of its work force, said Scantlin, who for the past four years served as Kemin’s director of global human resources.

Training is already under way for some of the employees.

“The first work day for a number of the accounting staff we hired in Des Moines was actually in Memphis,” Scantlin said. “We’ve been flying them to Memphis for training during the week and returning them home on the weekends to be with their families.” The Des Moines headquarters begins operations on Nov. 20, when the accounting system transition is completed.

Additionally, “we are starting recruiting already for our vitamin chemists,” Scantlin said. “They are difficult to find. We are looking locally, obviously, but it’s quickly expanding to a national search.”

Entry-level chemists’ salaries start in the $30,000 range, and average salaries for scientists are over $60,000. “Senior-level vitamin chemists will be much higher than that,” he said. The company is also seeking information technology professionals, particularly those versed in laboratory information management systems, a highly specific skill set.

Eurofins, which is currently leasing approximately 13,000 square feet from Knapp Properties Inc., will need a minimum of 40,000 square feet on at least seven acres for its permanent headquarters, Scantlin said.

In September, Eurofins was ranked by Standard & Poor’s as No. 7 among the 300 fastest-growing mid-size companies in Europe. The publicly held company was founded in 1987 by Gilles Martin, who is the majority shareholder.

Eurofins has established a U.S. network of laboratories over the past 10 years through a series of mergers and acquisitions of companies, among them Product Safety Labs in New Jersey, GeneScan USA in New Orleans, Alpha Chemical and Biomedical Laboratories in Petaluma, Calif., and Woodson-Tenent. Its most recent acquisition was in June, when it purchased Focus Bio-Inova Inc., a Virginia-based pharmaceutical testing company.

“We’re really looking to be the leader in bioanalytical testing in the world,” Scantlin said.