The American West could see some significant growth in the number of biotech jobs as companies are eying at least two states for expansions.
The American West could see some significant growth in the number of biotech jobs as companies are eying at least two states for expansions.
While the information available so far is vague as to which company may be behind the plan, Boulder, Colo. could see the addition of up to 1,000 biotech-related jobs. Last week, the Colorado Economic Development Commission agreed to provide a “Fortune 500 Company” up to $24.8 million in tax incentives to entice that company into making a capital investment in the area valued at $150 million. According to the Denver Business Journal, the company that is being wooed was not named. The attempt to bring up to 1,000 well-paying jobs to the city has been dubbed “Project Charlie Brown” by the commission, the Journal reported. While the company’s name was not disclosed by the EDC, the Journal noted that this company already has a presence in the state with four locations in Colorado. This potential project would likely be a centralized location that consolidates some of the other facilities. However, the potential 1,000 jobs that could be created would have to be new jobs in order to receive the EDC’s approved incentives. The new jobs would have an average salary of $136,721, more than twice the average wage of Boulder County, the Journal said.
Boulder is one of the top cities in the country for STEM-intensive jobs, according to a recent study conducted by 24/7 Wall St. There are multiple companies that have a presence in the city, including Clovis Oncology, AstraZeneca and Array Biopharma, which was acquired earlier this summer by Pfizer for $11.4 billion. In April, AveXis, a Novartis company, acquired a manufacturing facility in nearby Longmont, Colo. to provide additional production capacity for Zolgensma, a gene therapy treatment approved in May for spinal muscular atrophy. When AveXis announced the deal, the Illinois-based company said the Colorado facility will become the largest of the four sites involved in manufacturing its gene therapy treatments for SMA, as well as other planned treatment in development for rare genetic diseases.
In addition to the unnamed biotech, the Colorado EDC also awarded $2.65 million to a California-based biotech to build a manufacturing facility in the state, the Journal said. Like the previous project, this one too did not disclose the name of the company. The Journal said the EDC dubbed the offer “Project Goldfinch.” Unlike “Project Charlie Brown,” the company behind “Goldfinch” does not have a toehold in Colorado.
In addition to the Colorado action, neighboring Wyoming is also set to see a boost in biotech. New York-based Innovive Pharmaceuticals is eying construction of an $18 million plant in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Earlier this summer, economic development leaders in that state voted to approve a $9.3 million loan for the construction, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported. The facility would manufacture disposable caging products for laboratory animals used in medical research, according to the report. The new facility in Cheyenne would become the company’s primary site, the Tribune Eagle said, and could see the addition of another 80 to 100 jobs, if the project moves forward.
The investments in Colorado and Wyoming follow on the heels of GlaxoSmithKline’s announcement earlier this year of a $100 million investment in a Montana manufacturing facility. That facility that specializes in the manufacture of the company’s two-year-old shingles vaccine, Shingrix, which has become a significant growth product for the U.K.-based company. The funding, announced in April, will be used to expand the production capacity of key components of the adjuvant system used in several of GSK’s vaccines, including its shingles vaccine, Shingrix, as well as its malaria vaccine. The Hamilton, Montana facility is GSK’s sole manufacturing facility for Monophosphoryl Lipid (MPL), the world’s first bacterially-derived adjuvant, a crucial component in the company’s vaccines.
