Layoffs are Underway as Teva Winds Down Operations at New York Plant

Layoffs are Underway as Teva Winds Down Operations at New York Plant August 31, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

Teva Pharmaceuticals , headquartered in Israel, is expected to lay off 80 people at its Haverstraw, New York facility. The manufacturing plant currently employs 236 people and focuses on the manufacture of niacin, which is sometimes used as a treatment for high cholesterol and triglyceride levels. The site also hosts some research and development operations.

The first pink slips were delivered last week and will continue through February 28, 2017, when the plant is expected to close. “Closure of the Pomona site has been under consideration for a period of time,” company spokeswoman Michele Pelkowski told Iohud: The Journal News, “and Teva’s Pomona-based employees were informed previously of this possibility.”

Teva’s U.S. headquarters are located in North Wales, Pennsylvania. It acquired the site in 2008, when it bought Barr Pharmaceuticals. Teva plans to consolidate its research-and-development activities to Elizabeth, New Jersey. It has other sites in New York, including Fairfield, Buffalo, and Copiague.

The company has plans to create more than 130 jobs in New Jersey, and the company has indicated that research-and-development staffers from the Haverstraw site will be offered the chance to interview for positions there.

Teva is just wrapping up its acquisition of a large chunk of Dublin-based Allergan ’s generics business. That deal was originally announced in July 2015. Under the terms of the deal, Allergan received $33.75 billion in cash and $6.75 billion in stock.

And in April, Teva announced that it was establishing a joint company with Osaka, Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited . That joint company, Teva Takeda Yakuhin, will market generic drugs in Japan.

The closing of the facility in Haverstraw apparently caught the town leadership off guard. “I’m very surprised and extremely disappointed,” Haverstraw Supervisor Howard Phillips told Iohud.

The location is on 40 acres and Teva paid the country and village taxes about $397,000. The company’s school tax bill for 2015 was approximately $208,000, which has not been fully paid yet. The current tax assessment of the property is about $12.5 million.

The company recently dropped more than $1 million into the location, which was another reason the town and county leadership was surprised by the announcement.

“It’s hard to see any business leave Rockland County,” Ed Day, Rockland County Executive told Iohud, “but we understand the cyclical nature of every industry. … We hate to see anyone lose a job.”

Pfizer also has a facility in Rockland County. Earlier this month, Pfizer announced that it was laying off 151 people at its campus at Pearl River, New York. It expects to continuing employing about 700 people at its campus on North Middletown Road.

However, Pfizer recently broke ground on a new biologics clinical manufacturing facility in Andover, Massachusetts, which is expected to bring in at least 75 new employees. The company is investing more than $200 million in the 175,000-square-feet facility, which will be used to manufacture complex biologics and vaccines. It is expected to open by January 2019.

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