Life Science Sector Injects $2.6 Billion in Mid-Atlantic Project Starts in Fourth-Quarter 2016

Annette Kreuger, Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--When 2016 draws to a close, the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region is expected to have kicked off construction on 42 projects, both capital and maintenance, in the Pharmaceutical & Biotech Industry. The projects represent $2.6 billion in total investment value (TIV).

Click on the image at right for a graph detailing Mid-Atlantic projects in the Pharmaceutical-Biotech Industry that are set to kick off during fourth-quarter 2016, by state.

The projects are a blend of manufacturing plants and research laboratories, sourced out of the commercial and public sectors. The largest of the projects in the region, indeed in all of North America, remains the nearly $2 billion plan by Novo Nordisk AS (NYSE:NVO) (Bagsvaerd, Denmark) to construct a plant in Clayton, North Carolina. When complete, the site will produce the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) for use in the production of insulin.

While not in the same league as the Novo Nordisk project, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals' (Maharashtra, India) $80 million expansion plan was good news for the city of Monroe, North Carolina. Earlier this year, the company completed the $20 million retrofit of an existing 100,000-square-foot building it purchased, establishing a generic oral solid-dose manufacturing plant. Now the company plans to expand, adding injectable and topical generic production capacity.

Gaithersburg, Maryland, was tapped as the location for Novavax's (NASDAQ:NVAX) (Rockville, Maryland) $20 million clinical-scale vaccine plant. In the former Qiagen building, the company plans to renovate and fit up a portion of the building for the clinical-scale production of vaccines against Ebola and other infectious diseases, as well as add research and development space. The company may be delaying the project, as it battles the fallout from a failed trial over another drug candidate. The company's stock plunged 84% in mid-September.

With three months left to the year, there is a chance that a percentage of these projects will be delayed or put on hold. Nothing is ever definite until construction begins--and even then, changes happen. Each project will be tracked and updated. Some may be dropped altogether, while new ones are uncovered. Fortunately, the Pharmaceutical-Biotech Industry has a very low "fall-out" rate; more than 80% of the projects reported eventually make it to construction.

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