Oxford Pharmaceuticals Plans New U.S. Location With 200 Jobs
November 18, 2014
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
After several rounds of speculation, it was announced today that U.K.-based Oxford Pharmaceuticals will open a new facility in Birmingham, Ala., that will eventually employ around 200 people.
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley and other state and local officials are expected to officially announce the plans at The Governor’s Luncheon today being held at The Club. The facility is expected to cost $29 million and employ about 61 people when it opens in 2016. When the plant becomes fully operational it is expected to employ about 200 people.
“We’ve been working in conjunction with the state to lure a number of international pharmaceutical companies,” said Birmingham mayor William Bell in an AL.com article. “Oxford is the first of many others that we’ll be making in that regard. Birmingham is becoming the hotbed of medical technology, and other technology, and that’s what we’ll be focusing on.”
Oxford Pharmaceuticals, not to be confused with Oxford Pharma of India, will manufacture generic drugs to sell worldwide.
As part of the arrangement with Alabama, the company is believed to receive free rent and space from Innovation Depot until the new facility is completed. In addition, both Jefferson County and the city of Birmingham are expected to pony up incentives, such as tax rebates and infrastructure improvements. Additional players offering incentives will be the Birmingham Business Alliance, Alabama Department of Commerce, AIDT and the Jefferson County Economic Industrial Development Authority. The incentives will require approval by various committees and the city board of commissioners.
The location for the facility will be in Birmingham’s Jefferson Metropolitan Park at Lakeshore.
Recently David Carrington, who manages the county’s business development plans, appeared last Friday on “The Matt Murphy Show” and said that there are, “some exciting economic development projects that we are working on right now and we’ll be focusing a lot of energy between now and the end of the year to bring those to fruition.”
The Innovation Depot operates in partnership with the University of Alabama at Birmingham. It is a business incubation facility and program focused on the development of emerging biotechnology and life sciences, information technology and service businesses. Recent support has been for Pack Health, which attempts to bridge the educational gap between physicians and their patients, and Soluble Therapeutics and BioDtech, which are both working on large and small molecule delivery technologies.