Pharmaceutical Companies are Cutting Jobs and Closing Manufacturing Facilities in Puerto Rico

Pfizer said on Tuesday it will eliminate another 40 workers from factories in Puerto Rico. Pfizer closed a plant in Arecibo, Puerto Rico in 2005 and last year announced 210 layoffs in the U.S. Caribbean island territory

As pointed out by Ed Silverman over at Pharmalot, Puerto Rico.Pharmaceutical companies. Over the past 30 years, pharmaceutical manufacturing has accounted for a quarter of the island’s gross domestic product and currently employs about 20,000 Puerto Rican citizens.
Over the past few years, companies like Watson Pharmaceuticals (generics), GlaxoSmithKline, Teva (generics), Bristol Myers Squibb and Schering Plough have either closed or will close manufacturing facilities on the Island. These closings were somewhat surprising because the Puerto Rican workforce is one of the best pharmaceutical manufacturing workforces in the world. That said, US pharmaceutical companies are looking elsewhere to produce their drugs because of rising wages, changing tax structures and the high cost of electricity (supplied by oil-fired power plants) on the island. Further, over the past decade, there have been ongoing compliance and quality assurance problems at many of the shuttered manufacturing facilities. Officials from these companies explained that it was less costly to shut down and move operations elsewhere rather than modernize the plants and bring them into regulatory compliance.
Despite these recent facility closings, the island’s pharmaceutical manufacturing industry still produces 13 of 20 best selling drugs in the US. However that number will likely continue to dwindle over the next few years. Many companies that have closed or are considering closing production facilities are moving operations to Asian destinations like Singapore, China, Thailand (and even Vietnam) where there are trained workforces, lower wages and cost structures and many people speak English.
Unlike most pharmaceutical companies, Amgen, Abbot and Lilly recently built or relocated biomanufacturing operations to Puerto Rico. Because of a trained workforce and Puerto Rico’s ongoing familiarity with FDA regulatory requirements, I suspect that other biotechnology and specialty pharmaceutical companies will consider establishing biomanufacturing facilities in Puerto Rico– pharma’s loss may well be biotech’s gain!!!!
Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

http://www.biojobblog.com/2007/11/articles/biojobbuzz/happy-thanksgivingpharmaceutical-companies-are-cutting-jobs-and-closing-manufacturing-facilities-in-puerto-rico/