Even as it completes an expansion in North Carolina, United Therapeutics ($UTHR) is picking up for future use three buildings and a large parcel of land left idle by GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK).
"We haven't finalized our plans for the properties acquired from GSK," Andrew Fisher, chief strategy officer and deputy general counsel, says in an email to FiercePharmaManufacturing.
United paid $17.5 million for the buildings, which encompass 720,000 square feet, sit on a 135-acres and abut the 55-acre parcel where United has its current operations in Research Triangle Park (RTP), reports the Raleigh News & Observer. GlaxoSmithKline put the buildings up for sale in 2010 during its retrenchment. It still has on the market two other buildings with about 194,000 square feet in Durham, as well as acreage there.
United, which makes cardiopulmonary drugs, is finishing up a 177,000 square-foot expansion to the 200,000 square foot facility is already has in Triangle Park. The News Observer says the company has about 100 employees there now, but with the expansion could employ up to 350.
Fisher says in the email that the existing facilities are a mix of office, warehouse and manufacturing tied to oral treprostinil, its unapproved hypertension drug, currently being evaluated by the FDA. It has an action date of Oct. 27, he says.
The $74 million expansion began in May 2011, the Herald Sun reported last year and will add packaging and labeling capabilities.
- read the News & Observer story
- here is the earlier story by the Herald Sun