Eighty employees of Wyoming’s only drug manufacturing plant are feeling the pain of financially struggling Lannett. The opioid maker will close the plant in Cody and lay off its 80 remaining employees.
The small Philadelphia-based drugmaker this week informed employees that it could not find a buyer for Cody Laboratories and would close the plant by the end of the summer, the Gillette News Record reports.
Lannett has struggled with opioids falling out favor. A year ago, it laid out a cost reduction plan for Cody, where it develops and manufactures pain management APIs. Lannett whacked about 50 of the 135 employees at the Cody, Wyoming, plant and took a $5 million restructuring charge.
In the fall, however, Lannett decided the cuts were insufficient and put the facility up for sale. That effort proved fruitless.
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“We tried to find buyers and, largely due to the opioid crisis, there are not buyers lining up for this business,” Lannett spokesman Robert Jaffe told the newspaper.
The company last month said its restructuring efforts were paying off, and it raised its sales guidance for the year to a range of $640 million to $645 million from $615 million to $635 million.
Last month, the company began marketing generic versions of attention-deficit disorder drug Concerta and Adderall, both federally scheduled medications. It also said it was beginning a trial with a partner of a biosimilar of Sanofi's Lantus.