Cook Pharmacia Hires Contractor to Build $45 Million Biotech Plant on Site of Closed Electronics Factory in Indiana

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Cook Pharmacia LLC, a division of the Cook Group Incorporated (Bloomington, Indiana) is finalizing plans to construct a $45 million contract manufacturing plant (PEC 11002414). The new plant will be built on the site of the former Thomson Consumer Electronics facility. Thomson closed the plant, which was considered one of the world's largest television assembly plants in 1998 (Plant 1063535).

After the local community lost over 1,000 jobs when Thomson transferred their operations to Mexico, the Cook project with its promise of eventually adding 800 jobs was strongly courted by both the city and the state. The proposed incentive package offered to Cook includes a 10-year tax abatement from the City of Bloomington valued at $2.5 million a year, $500,000 for public infrastructure assistance from the City of Bloomington and over $6 million in tax credits from the state's EDGE and CRED programs.

The new contract manufacturing plant will use a process called mammalian cell fermentation, from which batches of cells will be grown that are genetically engineered to produce biopharmaceutical products, such as vaccines or drugs.

R. L. Turner of Zionsville, Indiana has been named the construction manager for the project, which is scheduled to start construction this summer.

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