Pfizer hangs sale sign on Exubera plant

Call your Realtor: Pfizer has put its ex-Exubera plant up for sale. The Terre Haute, Indiana, facility had been in the Pfizer family since 1948, when the drugmaker bought it from the U.S. government. Since then, it's undergone a variety of expansions and upgrades, including more than $300 million in investment since 1999. At its peak, the 580,000-square-foot facility on almost 1,000 acres employed some 800 people.

Most recently, the plant was used to make Exubera, Pfizer's inhaled insulin product. But just one year into the product's launch, Pfizer pulled the plug [1] on the formulation because of lackluster sales. Exubera just hadn't caught on with patients, who disliked the oversized inhaler device. And payers were slow to adopt the inhaled formula, too. Pfizer took a $2.8 billion charge to shut down production; about 600 Terre Haute workers were idled at the time.

- read the story [2] in the Indianapolis Star
- see the Wall Street Journal Health Blog post [3]

Related Articles:
Pfizer gives Nektar $135M for Exubera settlement [4] (Nov 2007)
Pfizer kills off Exubera, hunts for deals [1] (Oct 2007)
Exubera becoming a big disappointment for Pfizer [5] (Apr 2007)
UK: Exubera not worth the price [6] (Apr 2006)
FDA approves Pfizer's inhaled insulin [7] (Jan 2006)