September 20, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
ROUSES POINT, N.Y. – Pfizer will exit a site in upstate New York it has operated since 2011. The company expects to shutter the facility in early 2018, displacing about 120 employees, the Press Republican reported this morning.
Kim Bencker, head of communications for Pfizer Global Supply, told the Press that the company aims to “wrap up operations” at the solid-dose manufacturing facility by the end of 2017. Pfizer occupies a 79 acre site on the U.S. Canadian border. The Rouses Point site was originally used by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals , a company Pfizer acquired in 2009. The year before Pfizer struck its deal with Wyeth, that company leased the Rouses Point facility to New jersey-based Akrimax Pharmaceuticals. In 2011 though, Pfizer was able to reacquire the facility from Akrimax through an option it had, the Press Republican reported. Akrimax unloaded the property after it was unable to bring in the new business it had hoped. However, Pfizer’s work at the site has not been long lived and the company is ready to divest itself of a number of properties, with several in New York, as it undergoes a corporate restructuring, which is impacting its worldwide plant network. In 2010 the company announced its intentions to shutter eight sites in the U.S., Ireland and Puerto Rico in order to increase manufacturing efficiency under a plant management plan.
Since Pfizer reacquired the site in 2011, the company has been looking at ways to divest the property through a sale or some other option.
In June, Pfizer announced it will shutter a Boulder, Colo. manufacturing facility and eliminate 100 positions. Pfizer gained the facility in its $15 billion takeover of Illinois-based Hospira. 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.
Although Pfizer has closed or is in the process of closing some of its legacy sites, the company has also planned a new manufacturing site. In June, 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.
