Sign of the Times: Abraxis Completes $33 Million Purchase of Former Pfizer Site in Puerto Rico

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Reported by Annette Kreuger, Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Abraxis BioScience, Incorporated (NASDAQ:ABBI) (Los Angeles, California) has completed a $33.5 million purchase of the former Pfizer plant in Cruce Davila, Puerto Rico. The transaction is indicative of the changes the Pharmaceutical-Biotech Industry is experiencing as discussed in the 2007 Pharmaceutical-Biotech Industry Forecast. Previously hailed for stunningly large capital investments, Big Pharma now finds itself in retreat, at least in terms of manufacturing facilities, with organizational consolidations resulting in massive plant closures and sell-offs (reference: Big Pharma’s Financial Flu Killing Plants and Jobs Across the Nation). In today’s marketplace, it is biotech, ironically once widely regarded as being all about science and not enough about profits like its pharma brethren that are consistently investing in new plant capacity. Further irony lays in the fact that these expansions are increasingly being made through the purchase of facilities being shed by Big Pharma.

In the case of Abraxis, its purchase of the Cruce Davila site has given the company a 172,000 square-foot plant, fully equipped and validated for the production of European and U.S. compliant injectable products, protein-based biologics and metered doses inhalers (MOIs). Other facilities located on the site include two 90,000 square feet active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) plants and two support facilities with quality assurance and laboratories, which total another 262,000 square feet. The company will use the site for the production of chemotherapeutics such as its breast cancer drug Abraxane for injectable suspension.

Pfizer had continued to utilize the site’s APIs plant to produce the ingredients for its painkiller Celebrex, but patent expirations had helped lead the company to cease production at the pharmaceutical unit. Patent expirations of key drugs continue to dog Big Pharma, with generic versions slashing prices and impacting profits. Pfizer has made arrangements to lease the API plant from Abraxis for at least the next year to support its Celebrex production. The company continues to own and operate four other sites in Puerto Rico, with its plants in Aricebo, Caguas, Barceloneta and Vega Baja used for solid-dose manufacturing.

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