New York-based manufacturer SterRx has turned off the lights at its Plattsburgh, New York, plant and let go of 161 employees in the process.
The layoffs were reported in a New York state WARN notice, which attributed the cuts to a plant closure. In all, 144 employees at the company’s Plattsburgh site will hit the exit starting Oct. 24, according to the filing.
In addition, 17 SterRx workers at a distribution site will be let go, according to the notice.
The company did not immediately respond to Fierce Pharma’s request for comment.
The move was not taken lightly by local officials.
“I am disappointed by this decision especially since the North Country has continually invested in SterRx so that they have become a valued member of our local manufacturing sector,” Assemblyman Billy Jones told a local NBC affiliate in a statement. “This is a major hit for our community, but I continue to work with local leaders and workforce development partners to find a reuse of the building and help the employees find new job opportunities.”
SterRx leased its Plattsburgh distribution center from Murnane Building Contractors in an effort to expand after hitting a “rapid growth trajectory,” SterRx’s director of operations, Sarah McCoy, told local news outlet Press-Republican in 2021.
The 60,000-square-foot warehouse paired nicely with the company's 50,000-square-foot manufacturing plant. But later in 2021, the company’s upward trajectory took a turn when it recalled three lots of sodium bicarbonate due to waterborne microbial contamination.
A few months later, SternRx enacted another recall, this time pulling a whopping 240 lots of various products out of “an abundance of caution."
Around the same time, the FDA inspected the company's plant and found “serious deficiencies” in its practices for producing sterile products.
Then in July 2022, the agency slapped the facility with a warning letter, detailing numerous issues including products being exposed to “insanitary conditions" and other substandard manufacturing practices.