Mylan closing Illinois plant, cutting 90 jobs as part of slim-down after Meda buyout

Mylan has been in the midst of whacking about 3,500 jobs to cut costs and refocus after its $7 billion buyout last year of Meda Pharmaceuticals. About 90 of those cuts will come with the closure of a plant in Illinois.

The drugmaker will shutter a small plant in Decatur, Illinois, that it picked up last year in buyout of Sweden’s Meda, a company that came with about 4,500 employees. A spokesperson said the Decatur plant, which makes a variety of products such as pain med Soma and multivitamin Geritol, will be phased out over several months and the final closure will be in 2018.

Related: Mylan eyes up to 3,500 layoffs in post-M&A cost-cutting drive

“Since 2015, Mylan has made a number of significant acquisitions, and as part of the holistic, global integration of these acquisitions, we announced in December 2016 that it would be focusing on how to best optimize and maximize all of our assets across the organization and across all geographies,” the statement said. “This week, we announced plans to close our Decatur, Illinois, facility, which we acquired as part of our Meda transaction in 2016. This closure is part of the integration process announced in December of last year."

Mylan has already closed the Meda U.S. headquarters in Somerset, New Jersey, eliminating 94 employees there.

The company was “optimizing" its extensive manufacturing footprint even ahead of the buyout of Meda. Last year it reduced the workforce at a transdermal patch plant in St. Albans, Vermont, by about 10%, cutting 60 jobs.

Mylan picked up six plants with the buyout of Meda, including the Illinois facility, and five in Europe. It also got plants in France and Japan with its buyout of Abbott’s generic business in 2014 and two facilities with the acquisition last year of topical skin meds from Renaissance Acquisition Holdings.

It currently has about 50 plants, with 10 sites in North America, 12 in Europe, 25 in India, two in Japan and one in Australia.