Pfizer says it will close Puerto Rico plant
pharmafile | November 22, 2013 | News story | Manufacturing and Production | Guayama, Humacao, Pfizer, Puerto Rico, Vega Baja
The latest manufacturing facility to succumb to the loss of patent protection on top pharma brands is Pfizer’s Barceloneta unit, which will be shut down by 2017.
The plant is one of three operated by the pharma giant in Puerto Rico and produces active pharmaceutical ingredients as well as several drug products. Pfizer employs around 2,700 people across all its Puerto Rican sites and it is estimated that the latest decision could affect around 500 staff.
In a statement, Pfizer said it took the decision because of “excess capacity in its manufacturing network due to the changing global demand resulting from the loss of patent exclusivity and the achievement of greater efficiencies in manufacturing processes”.
Some of the production currently carried out at Barceloneta will be transferred to Pfizer’s other facilities in Guayama and Vega Baja, but at the moment the company is vague on the details.
The news comes after a mixed period for Puerto Rico’s pharma sector. There was the positive news this month that Eli Lilly will expand capacity at an insulin-producing plant, spending around $200 million out of a total $700 million on the unit in Carolina.
And last year, Bristol-Myers Squibb said it would invest $165 million at its plant in Humacao that makes diabetes and cardiovascular medicines.
However, that boost has been offset by Merck & Co’s decision last week to stop production at an API facility in Barceloneta in 2014 although formulation and packaging work out at the site will continue to be carried out by an external contractor.
In addition, the formulation operations at Merck’s Arecibo facility will be consolidated into Las Piedras and transferred to third-party contract manufacturers by the end of 2016.
The decision makes Merck’s Las Piedras facility its primary location in Puerto Rico, and is one of only to facilities in the company’s global network dedicated to the development and launch of new products.
The biopharmaceutical industry has been the leading industrial sector in Puerto Rico’s economic development since the mid-1970s, according to the island’s Pharmaceutical Industry Association (PIA), which notes it has generated almost a quarter of its total GDP in the last four decades and currently accounts for two thirds of total manufacturing exports.
The PIA said in its latest review that it is seeing increasing competition in biopharma manufacturing from Latin America, “which is investing heavily in developing its exports”.
Phil Taylor
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