G&W Laboratories buying Teva plant after picking up one from Actavis

G&W Chief Commercial Officer Aaron Greenblatt

For the second time in about 9 months, a privately held New Jersey company has saved a manufacturing plant from closing and hundreds of jobs from being lost. G&W Laboratories, which bought an Actavis ($ACT) facility in North Carolina last summer, is now taking over a Teva Pharmaceutical Industries ($TEVA) facility in Pennsylvania that was on the cusp of closing.

Teva announced on Monday that G&W will buy its plant in Sellersville, PA, and will offer jobs to the 280 employees still working at the facility. Along with the plant, G&W is buying about two dozen drugs from Teva that the family-owned operation will sell in the U.S. under its own label. The South Plainfield, NJ-based company also got the right to market one or two more Teva drugs under its own label that Teva will continue to produce at its plant in Zagreb, Croatia. G&W will manufacture some other products at Sellersville just until Teva can get them transferred to some of its other facilities. Terms of the deal, which is slated to be complete by the end of April, were not disclosed.

Carlo de Notaristefani

"We have a qualified and dedicated team at Sellersville and are pleased that we were able to come to an agreement with G&W Laboratories that will enable them to continue working in their current community," Carlo de Notaristefani, CEO of Teva Global Operations, said in a statement.

Executives at G&W did not return phone calls about the company's recent buyouts. In a statement, Chief Commercial Officer Aaron Greenblatt said, "The acquisition of the Sellersville facility and products strengthens our long-term relationship with Teva, and fits with our strategy of acquiring platforms from which we can grow the business and expand our product and dosage offering."

Facing generic competition to its top-selling multiple sclerosis drug Copaxone, Teva is in the midst of a 5-year, $2 billion cost-cutting program that may claim up to half of its 75 manufacturing plants as it concentrates production in high-efficiency facilities and moves some production to lower-cost countries. The Sellersville operation was identified in May of 2013 as one that would no longer be needed. It had about 475 employees at the time.

G&W also came to the rescue last June of about 300 employees at a plant in Lincolnton, NC, that Actavis had targeted for closure. Terms of that deal were not disclosed at the time, but according to a recent SEC filing by Actavis, G&W snapped up the 150,000-square-foot facility for $21.5 million and also struck an agreement to supply Actavis with some products for a period.

According to the company's website, G&W was founded by Carl Greenblatt in 1919 upon his return from WWI. The company is still family-owned and Carl Greenblatt's grandson Ronald is now CEO, while Ronald's son Aaron is chief commercial officer.

- here's the release