December 2, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
DURHAM, N.C. – North Carolina continues to flex its muscles in recruiting health science jobs. The latest feather in the Tar Heel state’s hat is the 260 job expansion project from England-based clinical research firm Premier Research.
The company will invest more than $4.1 million through 2020 to develop the new operations facility that will be staffed by project managers, clinical monitors, data managers, and others who will support customers throughout North America, the company announced Monday. The 260 jobs created through the expansion are expected to have annual salaries of $73,296. Most of the jobs that Premier Research plans to add in Durham will be for clinical trials, project management and data management on behalf of its client companies in the biopharmaceuticals and medical device fields, the Triangle Business Journal reported.
“Access to first-rate talent, the ability to work with highly innovative companies, and superb higher education resources drew us to Research Triangle Park, and the area continues to impress us as a great place to do business,” Ludo Reynders, Premier Research chief executive officer said in a statement. “This will greatly increase our footprint in a community that is a vital center of the medical research industry.”
Premier’s expansion will “meet the demand from the rapidly growing biotechnology sector of the pharmaceutical industry,” Sean Russell, the company’s chief commercial officer, told the News and Observer of Raleigh.
The expansion project builds upon a five-year-old investment in Durham. In 2010, Premier Research built a research laboratory that employs about 50 people, the Triangle Business Journal reported this morning. The expansion is being supported by a state supported economic incentive package worth $2.5 million over 12 years.
Premier focuses on testing drugs in the fields of analgesia, psychiatry, neurological disorders, attention deficit disorders and hyperactivity disorders. The company operates in 84 countries and employs more than 1,000 professionals according to information on its website.
Premier Research is not the only contract research organization to call the Research Triangle Park area home. Quintiles, Inc. , PRA Health Sciences and INC Research, Inc. also make their home in the area.
North Carolina has seen a number of health science expansions this year. In August, Mayne Pharma, another contract research organization, announced a $65 million investment to expand its Greenville, N.C. facility, which will support the hiring of 110 new employees.
In September, Durham-based Patheon Inc., a provider of commercial manufacturing outsourcing services and outsourced pharmaceutical development services, forged ahead on its one-year-old commitment to add nearly 500 jobs to its eastern North Carolina sterile-fill facility, also located in Greenville.
GlaxoSmithKline also recently expanded operations at a site in Zebulon, N.C. to accommodate a new assembly line to manufacture the asthma drug Ellipta.
However, other pharmaceutical companies with a manufacturing presence in North Carolina have recently reduced their Tar Heel workforce. In May, Hospira, Inc. announced it was laying off 100 people at its Clayton, N.C. facility. And in April, Canadian firm Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. acquired Raleigh, N.C.’s Salix Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. , laying off 258 workers.
