Production at three Patheon plants affected by Hurricane Matthew

Sometimes drug manufacturers have to weather the storm, literally. CDMO Patheon reopened its Greenville, NC, site this weekend after temporarily closing it and two others that were in the path of Hurricane Matthew.

Company spokeswoman Mari Mansfield said on Monday that the Greenville plant “resumed full operations” on Saturday. 

In a filing Friday, Amsterdam-based Patheon said it had also temporarily stopped production at its plants in Florence, SC, and Manati, Puerto Rico, because of the weather and power outages. In Puerto Rico, a fire at a power plant had affected its facility in Manati. The Florence plant was also affected by a power outage. In Greenville, roadways were flooded and the company closed the facility to assure employee safety, it reported.

The manufacturer said none of the facilities was damaged. The company will update investors in early November about the impact on its fourth quarter but said it didn’t expect any effect on its 2017 financials.

In a note to investors, Evercore ISI analyst Ross Muken said the firm figured the plant closures could have a $5 million to $15 million revenue impact on the quarter. “Our revenue impact is based on the assumption that the facilities were closed for ~5 days on average and the three facilities account for ~25% of total manufacturing capacity,” he told investors.

Other drugmakers have faced disaster-related plant closures in the last couple of years. India’s Natco had to close a plant in Manali, near Chennai, last December because of flooding. The facility was later cited in a Form 483 by the FDA. In August 2015, GlaxoSmithKline closed a plant in China that was damaged by a huge explosion that ripped through the port there after a storage warehouse full of chemicals ignited. That plant closure led to some shortages in some markets.  

- here’s the 8-K

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