Canada's Pharmascience expanding plant in Montreal

Canada's Pharmascience will expand facilities in Quebec and is getting help from taxpayers there to accomplish that.

The drugmaker said Monday that it will invest more than $55 million to expand facilities in Montreal. The largest chunk of that, $47.5 million, will be to add production, as well as packaging and quality control capabilities. Another $8.2 million will be invested in R&D operations. The new operations are slated to be complete by the end of 2016.

The drugmaker is getting $4 million from Investissement Québec and $800,000 from Emploi Québec to help with the expansion. "The investments we are announcing today will help create 65 new jobs, and help secure the existing jobs based in Greater Montreal," said Morris Goodman, chairman and founder of the privately owned company. With 1,546 employees in Quebec, he said his company is the largest pharma employer in the province.

The company has been steadily expanding its operations. In 2013 it invested more than $4 million in a 156,000-square-foot distribution center in Dorval. A couple of years before that, the drugmaker opened a $40 million R&D center and office complex in Montreal.

Other drugmakers have been expanding in Canada. Last fall, Baxter International ($BAX) said it would spend $10 million to expand its pharma admixing capacity in facility in Mississauga, Ontario, adding 25 jobs in the process.

- here's the release