RK Pharma leases part of Pfizer’s Pearl River, New York, campus for manufacturing

A small piece of a campus in New York that was once owned by Wyeth and then Pfizer will now become home to a small drugmaker.

RK Pharma has leased 83,000 square feet at the former Pfizer complex in Pearl River that is now owned by Industrial Realty Group. IRG announced the deal, according to GlobeSt.com.

The company expects to invest about $17.5 million and bring in 100 employees to the facility, where it intends to make APIs and other products. It got assistance from the Rockland Economic Development Corp.

“Construction, certification and approval of a new drug product manufacturing facility typically takes three to four years and leasing the Pearl River facility has allowed us to hit the ground running, saving us valuable time and money,” Ravishanker Kovi, founder and executive chairman of RK Pharma, said in a release. Kovi is also a founder of New Jersey-based Apicore.

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According IRG, RK Pharma expects to manufacture and commercialize a portfolio of injectable products as well as ophthalmic, dermal and oral solid dosage products by the end of the year.

IRG acquired a 200-acre developed portion of the site in 2015. It had been home to Wyeth before Pfizer gobbled up that company in 2009 in $68 billion deal. The site once had 4,000 employees before Pfizer eliminated consumer health production at Pearl River and then vaccine production there in 2016, leaving about 700 employees in oncology drug production and research and development operations, it said at the time.