Mylan Napa plant to close by year-end

Mylan has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the former Dey plant in Napa County, CA. The plan to close it is back on and by year's end the lights will be off. 

Mylan ($MYL) actually filed a so-called WARN notice last year indicating the plant would close by the end of this year, costing 267 employees their jobs. The company has not been more specific since then. Mylan did not respond to a call for comment, but officials at the Napa-Lake Workforce Investment Board said they are working with the company in preparation for providing employment services, including retraining.

Bruce Wilson, executive director of the agency, said Mylan is in the process of downsizing at the plant now. 

The generic drugmaker acquired Dey in 2007 as part of its $6.6 billion buyout of the generic business of Germany-based Merck KGaA's, according to reports at the time. Dey focused on respiratory and allergy drugs and had about 540 employees at the facility when it was sold. Mylan in 2008 laid off some of those workers and indicated it would close the plant but reversed course in 2009 and said it would keep it open with 300 to 400 workers, according to the Napa Valley Register. Then last year, it again said the plant would be shuttered. The building itself may have a life after the closure. The newspaper says county officials have taken an interest in the two-story, 78,000-square-foot facility, indicating they might buy it when it goes on the market. 

The closure comes even as Mylan has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to buy manufacturing capacity in India and elsewhere. In February it struck a deal to buy Agila Specialties, for $1.6 billion plus milestones, from India's Strides Arcolab. Agila has 9 manufacturing facilities in India, Brazil and Poland, 8 of which have been approved by the FDA. That deal was announced a week after Mylan closed a $32.5 million deal to buy a nearly-new, FDA-approved API plant in India from SMS Pharmaceuticals. 

- read the Napa Valley Register story
- here's the WARN notice

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