October 19, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
MONTREAL – In order to increase competitiveness and optimize operating efficiencies, Canada-based Pharmascience Inc. is terminating 90 positions at its home office, the company announced this morning.
The company said there were several factors leading to the job cuts, including pricing and regulatory pressures that have led to increased market instability, particularly in Quebec, but also across the globe. The company said it “has had no choice but to adjust to this new business reality to ensure the growth and sustainability of its business.” Not only is the company terminating the 90 positions, but it said it will have to review new investments to ensure growth and sustainability. Pharmascience employs about 1,500 people in Quebec, the company said.
“This has been a difficult decision for us. We have always been deeply committed to our employees and are extremely grateful for their hard work and dedication over the years. We could not have built this company without them,” David Goodman, Pharmascience’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.
In its announcement, the privately-owned Pharmascience did not indicate from which departments the cuts would be made, nor did it share how much money the company believes it will save through the terminations.
The termination notice and the concerns over company investments came several months after Pharmascience announced plans to invest $55.7 million by the end of 2016 to modernize its R&D facilities and increase its production capacity in Greater Montreal. In June, the company said of the $55.7 million, $8.2 million will go towards the modernization of the company’s R&D facilities to facilitate the development of new products for international markets. The additional $47.5 million was going to be used to “support new production, packaging and quality management technologies” that were going to position the company to “better meet the growing global demand for the medications the company manufactures, while also enhancing its competitiveness.” In the announcement about the job cuts, Goodman did not suggest the company was halting or limiting the investments into the expansion, but it is likely the planned expansion is one of the unnamed investments the company said it will have to closely monitor.
Since its founding in 1983, Pharmascience, which says it’s the 10th largest pharmaceutical company in Canada, said it has invested more than $500 million into its R&D efforts. The company manufactures nearly 400 product families in 20 different dosage forms for over 2,000 products. In Canada alone, more than 45 million prescriptions a year are filled with Pharmascience products, the company said. In August the company ran into a bit of negative press after it initiated a voluntary recall of its high-blood pressure drug, pms-Atenolol 100 mg, due to a labelling error. One lot of the blood pressure medications was labeled as having 50 mg doses.
