Canada's generic drugmaker Pharmascience has two manufacturing plants in Montreal that produce 2,500 products from its 300 families of prescription and over-the-counter drugs. And now it also has a spanking new distribution center to deliver them.
The family-owned company on Wednesday opened the 156,000-square-foot distribution center in Dorval. CEO David Goodman, part of the founding family, said the new operation will serve as its single distribution center. The company invested $4 million to equip the facility, which has digital wireless inventory control. He said it is expected to cut time and expenses by up to 20%.The new operation can handle 10,000 pallets of products. It has 60 employees, which includes its customer service and quality control operations.
"We ship to customers in Canada and 60 other countries, and in this highly competitive business you'd better have very smart transportation logistics," Goodman tells the newspaper.
The company is looking ahead to the growth it expects in generic drugs. "Burgeoning public and private health care services could only boost demand for lower-cost drugs as many Big Pharma patents ran out," he said. The company also has new products coming from Aegera Therapeutics, a cancer drug biotech it acquired in 2011. The family also owns Paladin Labs.
The distribution facility is not the only expansion of Pharmascience in the last couple of years. In 2011 it opened a $40 million R&D center and office complex in Montreal. It said at the time, it expected to hire 180 new employees. The company, which has about 1,300 employees. Last year, it reported revenues of $700 million.
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