July 27, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
PORTAGE, Mich. – Pfizer is making a $146 million investment to expand its manufacturing and warehousing space in Michigan, WKZO-AM reported this morning.
The giant drug company is planning to build a $40.6 million warehouse facility and a $105.6 million sterile facility. The new site would be used to manufacture vial medicines and require custom-built cold storage areas, the radio station reported. Although the company will build the larger facilities, a Pfizer spokesperson told WKZO that it would not result in a job book for the region. The new site, which is near an existing Pfizer facility in Portage, would allow for the retention of the 52 positions currently employed and will call for the addition of 15 new positions. Pfizer is currently advertising for 18 positions in Michigan on its website.
Pfizer’s current Portage site produces sterile injectables, nonsterile medications, biologicals, alcohol-based medicines, and surgical sponges. Additionally, the site manufactures 150 active ingredients for steroids, antibiotics, and other pharmaceuticals and specialty chemicals, Pfizer said on its website.
The investments in new technology will allow for Pfizer’s Michigan facilities to compete with plants in India and China, Robert Betzig, a company spokesperson said, according to WKZO.
While Pfizer is making an investment in Michigan, the company is shuttering other sites around the globe following company analysis of site productivity. One site that is feeling the sting of closure is a Boulder, Colo. facility that will result in the loss of 100 jobs. Pfizer gained that particular site through its 2015 $15 billion acquisition of Illinois-based Hospira, Inc. Pfizer said the Colorado facility was targeted for closure after an analysis of its sites showed the facility was being underutilized. The shuttering of the site will not happen immediately, but will gradually close operations over the next few years and completely shut down by 2019.
When it acquired Hospira, Pfizer gained several manufacturing facilities across the United States, including the one in Colorado, as well as Austin, Texas, Buffalo, N.Y. and McPherson, Kan.
Pfizer is in the midst of a restructuring that could see the company divide itself into multiple entities. Ultimately Pfizer could be comprised of three units—Global Innovation Products (GIP) business, and Vaccines Oncology and Consumer (VOC) business. Last year, Ian Read, chief executive officer of Pfizer, said a decision would likely be made at the end of 2016. He reiterated that earlier this year after the Allergan deal fell through.
While Pfizer shuts down the Colorado site, earlier this month the company broke ground on a new biologics clinical manufacturing plant in Andover, Mass. The 175,000-square-feet facility will be used to manufacture complex biologics and vaccines. The site is expected to be five stories tall and is projected to open by January 2019, about the same time the Boulder site will be winding down its operations. The company is planning to hire 75 new employees at the facility.
