Novartis to close Puerto Rico plant and outsource to Eli Lilly

The Swiss drugmaker confirmed it will close its facility in Humacao today. telling in-Pharmatechnologist.com the decision — which will result in the loss of 270 jobs - followed a review of its manufacturing network A spokesman told us “Novartis continually reviews its manufacturing infrastructure and capacity, Including the number and size of its sites.

to ensure we have the right production capacity in place to meet market demand, support our products and pipeline, and maximize productivity.

Novartis Consumer Health decided to close Humacao m a phased manner over time following such a review of manufacturing

infrastructure and capacity.” Production of the consumer health drugs - Gas-X (simethicone) and the laxative Ex-Lax — will be transferred to Novartis’ site in Lincoln. Nebraska as will the packaging of Novartis’ ulcer treatment, Prevacid

Novartis will outsource production and packaging of the animal health products made in Humacao - Sentinel. Interceptor. and Milbemax — to facilities operated by either US drug makerEli Lilly or Virbac.

Puerto Rico trends Novartis is not the only drugmaker to have transferred manufacturing operations away from Puerto Rico in recent years. In 2013 . for example. Pfizer and Merck & Co both announced plans to reduce their manufacturing footprints on the island.

The perceived wisdom is that a 2010 decision to phase out a tax credit that effectively made profits attributed to activities on Puerto Rico exempt from US taxes made the island less attractive to the pharmaceutical industry.

A 2012 report by the Federal Bank of New York concluded that: “Tax incentives led to an outsized presence of the pharmaceuticals industry on the Island. The incentives have been phased out and employment in the industry has declined.

The authors also predicted that: “Going forward, there appears to oe only a limited prospect for

the sector to be a driver of growth.”

But while the Pfizer and Merck decisions, as well as Eli Lilly’s more recently announced plan to close its Guayama facility, may support the view that Puerto Rico is less attractive to the drug

industry, the picture is more complex.

In recent months a number of drugmakers — including both Novartis’ new contractor Eli Lilly and fellow Big Pharma firm Bristol Myers-Squibb (BMS) — have announced plans to manufacture more products in Puerto Rico.

Novartis did not respond when we ask if changes to the tax laws had factored into its decision making and instead restated that the closure is part of a manufacturing network review.

copyright - Unless otherwise stated all contents of this web site are © 2015- WIlliam Reed Business Media SAS - All Rights

Reserved - Full details for the use of materials on this site can be found ii the Terms & Conditions

Novartis will close an OTC plant in Puerto Rico by 2019 and transfer manufacturing and packaging actives to sites in the US and facilities operated by Eli Lilly and Virbac.

By
Gareth MacDonald



Novartis to close Puerto Rico plant and outsource to Eli Lilly

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IMF Executive Board Discusses the First Assessment of Eligible Countries under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative

On December 21, 2005 the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) established the list of countries that qualify for debt relief from the Fund under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). Debt relief delivery, which could start as soon as January 3, 2005, is now conditional on getting the consents of all the contributors to the Subsidy Account of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) Trust, whose contributions help finance the Initiative. The MDRI will deliver debt relief from the Fund to qualifying members countries with an annual per capita income at or below US$380, and to countries above the threshold that have reached the completion point under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The implementation of the MDRI will reduce the external debt burden of a number of the world's poorest countries and will provide additional resources to help them reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Background The Executive Board appro...
Read more

Oil’s chaotic collapse deepens; stocks drop worldwide

Image
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices crumpled even further Tuesday, and U.S. stocks sank to their worst loss in weeks as worries swept markets worldwide about the economic carnage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The market’s spotlight was again on oil, where prices have plummeted because very few people are flying or driving, and factories have shut amid widespread stay-at-home orders. Global demand is set to drop to levels last seen in the mid 1990s. At the same time, oil producers can’t slow their production fast enough, and all the extra crude means storage tanks are quickly running out of room. The cost for a barrel of U.S. oil to be delivered in June plunged 43% to $11.57. That’s the part of the market that oil traders are focused on and trading most actively. For oil to be delivered next month, which is when storage tanks could top out, the cost of a barrel stood at $10.01. A day earlier, it fell below zero for the first time, meaning traders paid others to take oil off their hand...
Read more

Mapping Extreme Poverty Around the World A new report from the

Image
A new report from the  World Bank  just landed, finding that a record low of 10% of humanity now live in extreme poverty, down from 11% in 2013. But poverty rates aren’t anywhere close to equal between continents or even countries, as our new series of maps clearly demonstrates. The World Bank provides an in-depth explanation for its methodology, which you can find in Appendix A of the full report  here . We focused on the percentage of people in each country living below what the World Bank defines as extreme poverty, or $1.90/day. We’ll let the researchers defend this definition on their own, but there is one caveat to keep in mind. It can be extraordinarily difficult to collect reliable data from so many countries on a regular basis, and in fact we used the latest year in which numbers were available whenever possible. For example, in some of these maps we compare 2011 figures against 2015. In short, our maps provide the clearest possible apples-to-apples compa...
Read more