There has been a fair amount written on a story we previewed last week. With plenty of windy speechifying from politicians, including the governor of Georgia, it was announced that drug-delivery company Osmotica Pharmaceutical will spend $20 million over the next five years to build an R&D and manufacturing operation in Marietta, just outside Atlanta.
Forrest Waldon, Osmotica's CEO, said that tax breaks from Georgia, combined with an educated workforce, convinced the company to create 156 new jobs in Marietta. "It would be very difficult to go to an area that did not have skilled pharmaceutical people and just start up an operation," Waldon is quoted as saying in the Marietta Daily Journal. "You need those people, a core group of people, in place to do that.
The Wilmington Star News in North Carolina noted that although Osmotica has a headquarters in Wilmington, the region did not meet the company's criteria--namely an existing facility "at the right price." What did Marietta have that Wilmington did not? It has the former Solvay Pharmaceuticals campus, which closed in early 2010 after Solvay was bought by Abbott Laboratories.
Osmotica also has operations in Buenos Aires and Budapest. The company has a number of drug-delivery products in various stages of development focusing on treatment of Parkinson's disease, according to the company's website. It also uses its Osmodex drug-delivery technology in partnerships with other companies. The Osmodex "family" of products "combines laser drilled tablet technology with variety of single active and multiple active drug delivery devices," according to a statement.
The attention paid to Osmotica's expansion shows that the need for pharmaceutical companies to expand the delivery options of existing drugs translates, eventually, into real jobs on the ground for the companies working on the technology.
- read more in the Marietta Daily Journal
- and in the Atlanta Business Chronicle
- FiercePharma Manufacturing's George Miller has more on state financial incentives
- and the Star News discusses why Wilmington did not make the cut