September 24, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
GREENVILLE, N.C. – Australia-based Mayne Pharma broke ground Wednesday on its new $65 million expansion at its eastern North Carolina facility that will include the hiring of more than 100 new employees over the next five years.
In August, Mayne Pharma, a contract and specialty pharmaceutical manufacturer, announced plans to expand the Greenville facility that includes a 126,000 square-foot expansion to support space for use in large-scale oral and solid-dose manufacturing. During a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday, the company said the $65 million investment includes plans to repurpose existing space to support laboratory expansions. Additionally, the expanded facility will include a new visitor and staff administrative center linking the two main buildings, the Triangle Business Journal reported this morning. The new administrative center will include space to host teleconferences, visitor meeting rooms and workstations, a new cafeteria, a fitness center and an employee training area, the Journal said.
Wednesday’s groundbreaking included tree clearing to make way for the new construction, which has yet to begin, WCTI reported. Mayne Pharma predicts the expansion will be completed by 2018.
Gov. Pat McCrory, who took a tour of the facility after the groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday, said the Mayne Pharma employees in Greenville help provide a greater quality of life for people around the world due to the drugs they help manufacture, WCTI said.
Mayne develops and manufactures branded and generic products globally. The company said the investment in the Greenville facility includes the hiring of 110 employees over the next five years. The site currently employs 350 people. The new positions will include scientists, quality assurance specialists and manufacturing operators. Positions will have an average salary of $60,000, almost double the average salary for the area.
“This significant investment in our Greenville site will allow Mayne Pharma to take on new and larger products, and expand our work in advanced oral drug delivery technologies, along with high-potent and controlled-release products,” Stefan Cross, president of Mayne Pharma USA, said in an August statement.
Also in the August statement, Scott Richards, Mayne’s chief executive officer, said the expansion will “support the sustained growth in demand we are experiencing in MCS, unconstrained commercialization of the expanding pipeline of products under development and the growth in market share we expect from our on-market products.”
Mayne Pharma said it has seven modified-release products in its pipeline. Sales of these products, if approved, are estimated at $3.5 billion. Three of these products have been filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the company said.
The Greenville facility was originally owned by Metrics Contract Services, which was acquired by Australia-based Mayne in 2012 for $120 million. Metrics as founded in 1994 by a Burroughs Wellcome scientist, Phil Hodges, and a professor at nearby East Carolina University, John Bray.
Mayne’s Greenville site provides contract pharmaceutical development services to third parties globally. Specialty products manufactured by Mayne Pharma include acne treatment Doryx tablets and the combination pain treatment Lorcet. Generic products also include doxycycline, hydrocodone and erythromycin. The Greenville site specializes in oral and topical dosage forms including highly potent compounds, Schedule II-V controlled substances, inherently unstable compounds and products with poor bioequivalence, according to Mayne’s website.
Mayne Pharma posted $143 million in revenue for 2014.
The Greenville expansion of the Mayne facility was supported by $2.7 million in tax incentives and grant money, including a performance-based grant of $550,000 from the One North Carolina Fund, which was established to assist local governments in North Carolina attract business projects to stimulate the local economy.
Will the Presidential Election Change the Face of the Way Prescription Drugs are Sold in the United States?
Although Turing Pharmaceuticals announced it will revise its 5,000 percent increase of a newly acquired drug to treat toxoplasmosis, the move sparked a public outcry that resulted in one presidential candidate calling for price caps on prescription medication.
In August, Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim from Impax Laboratories and increased the price of the medication from $13.50 per tablet to $750 per tablet, a 5,000 percent increase. Turing Chief Executive Officer Martin Shkreli defended the increase, saying the revenues would be used to subsidize new research into treatments for toxoplasmosis. Has since said the company will reduce the price, but did not specify what the price would be.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said if elected she would cap monthly out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs at $250 to avoid “price gouging.” Her comment sent the stock market into a state of flux, with several large companies seeing a drop in their stock of up to 10 percent. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index dropped 4.4 percent and the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF dropped by 6 percent.
BioSpace wants to know what you think: Will the presidential election change the face of the way prescription drugs are sold in the United States?
