Sunovion Pharmaceuticals will shutter its Sepracor Canada API plant in Windsor, Nova Scotia, next year, costing 32 employees their jobs.
Plant manager Vince Kosewski told the Herald Business Insider that a "shift in the manufacturing market dynamics for active pharmaceutical ingredients" had led to the decision.
Most API manufacturing is now done in low-cost countries like China and India, although there are North American manufacturers who believe quality problems in those countries will reignite interest in products manufactured here and in Europe.
The company said in a statement that it "has made transition arrangements for the affected employees," but also pointed out that the plant closure would not affect its sales operations in Canada. The company will try to sell the plant once it closes in mid-2013, Candace Steele Flippin, Sunovion's senior director of corporate communications, said via email.
The 50,000-square-foot plant has been operating in Windsor since 1994, according to the Herald Business Insider. Sepracor was acquired by Japan's Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma in 2010 and then renamed Sunovion. Based in Marlborough, MA, Sunovion specializes in central nervous system and respiratory drugs.
The company last year paid a $47,000 OSHA fine and pleaded guilty to failing to provide proper ventilation related to the 2008 death of lead chemist Roland Daigle. He died of lung failure after being exposed to trimethylsilyldiazomethane (TMSD) while working in a quality-control laboratory at the Windsor plant. Exhaust hoods had stopped operating while work was being done on a roof, according to a story in Chemical & Engineering News.
- here's the release
- read the Herald Business Insider story