Ferring preps for first U.S. plant opening as it moves to New Jersey campus

The U.S. arm of Switzerland-based Ferring Pharmaceutical has opened the first phase of a $135 million U.S. campus with the expectation that it will be in commercial production in the first quarter of 2016. It is its first U.S. manufacturing facility.

The privately held company has 275 people at the campus and work began last week in the clinical manufacturing suite and clinical laboratories. It intends to expand its staff significantly over the next 18 to 24 months as its commercial production facility gets approvals and ramps up, a spokeswoman said. Ferring projects it will be manufacturing and packaging about $200 million worth of product for the U.S. market when it reaches full commercial production.

Consolidating operations in one location will make the company "more nimble, increases speed of communication, alignment and cross functions," COO Aaron Graff said at an event last week, the Daily Record reports.

Courtesy of Ferring

Graff said the company was committed to New Jersey and did not extract any special incentives to build the new campus there. Tax cuts and grants have become popular inducements given by state and local governments desperate to land jobs for their areas. Being private, Ferring is not managing its business quarter to quarter but looking 20 to 40 years down the road, he explained, according to the Daily Record. "We aren't thinking about the next two years or 5 years. … We dug in for the long haul," Graff said.

Ferring expects to see growth, particularly in gastroenterology and urology, areas of strength for the company outside the U.S. that have not yet been developed here. In October, the company acquired the rights from Sanofi ($SNY) to desmopressin, a synthetic form of vasopressin used to treat frequent urination among other conditions that Ferring originally developed in the 1970s.

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