About 250 Pfizer employees will remain in the Memphis area after the pharma giant secured a partial tax freeze for 14 years from local governments that will save the company an estimated $5.3M in taxes.
About 250 Pfizer employees will remain in the Memphis area after the pharma giant secured a partial tax freeze for 14 years from local governments that will save the company an estimated $5.3 million in taxes.
The jobs that have been saved have average annual wages of $88,775, according to The Commercial Appeal of Memphis. With the partial tax freeze, local governments will see a tax benefit of about $17 million payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT). Pfizer secured the tax breaks from the Economic Development Growth Engine of Memphis and Shelby County.
Under terms of the deal Pfizer struck with the local governing bodies, the company will relocate its Global Financial Services support unit to a new office building. At one time, the financial support unit had nearly 500 employees, but the company said changes in technology and business strategy have caused the force to shrink, Memphis Daily News reported.
In addition to the financial services unit, Pfizer also maintains a distribution operation in the Memphis area, according to reports.
Tennessee is not the only place that Pfizer has been securing its physical footprint. After months of speculation, Pfizer announced it was investing $100 million in an expansion of its plant in Sanford, N.C. The Sanford site currently employs about 450 people and is used to manufacture clinical and commercial drug materials for conjugate vaccines. With the $100 million investment, Pfizer is expected to hire an additional 50 employees at the N.C. site. Jobs there are expected to have an average salary of about $90,000. Like in Memphis, Pfizer is benefitting from economic development incentives to help with the expansion. North Carolina is providing the company with a $250,000 grant.
In addition to the Sanford deal, in 2016 Pfizer snapped up Bamboo Therapeutics, a spinout of Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Asklepios BioPharmaceutical. The deal provided Pfizer with the means for a deeper dive into gene therapy. Bamboo was focused on developing gene therapies for the potential treatment of patients with certain rare diseases related to neuromuscular conditions and those affecting the central nervous system.
Pfizer has also made heavy investments in Massachusetts, including a new $200 million new biologics clinical manufacturing plant in Andover, Mass. Pfizer has its Research and Development hub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its Andover campus currently is made up of seven buildings, including laboratories, clinical and commercial manufacturing suites, and support units. The new facility will have five independent manufacturing suites.
In the U.S., Pfizer shuttered some of the manufacturing facilities it gained through its 2015 $15 billion acquisition of Illinois-based Hospira, Inc. When it acquired Hospira, Pfizer gained several manufacturing facilities across the United States, including one in Boulder, Colo., Austin, Texas, Buffalo, N.Y. and McPherson, Kan. In 2015, the company consolidated three R&D operations in Cambridge, Mass. under one roof.
