Frontida to buy two Phila. drug plants
Frontida BioPharm Inc., an Exton-based affiliate of China-based Tigermed's Frontage Laboratories Inc., says it has agreed to buy the former Mutual Pharmaceuticals drug-production plants in Northeast Philadelphia's Juniata and Burholme neighborhoods from their India-based owner, Sun Pharmaceuticals.
Frontida BioPharm Inc.
, an Exton-based affiliate of China-based
Tigermed
's
Frontage Laboratories Inc.
, says it has agreed to buy the former
Mutual Pharmaceuticals
drug-production plants in Northeast Philadelphia's Juniata and Burholme neighborhoods from their India-based owner,
Sun Pharmaceuticals
.
Frontida plans to expand the current Sun workforce. The company's 200 workers make a total of 40 products at the plants and another in Aurora, Ill., Frontida chief operations officer and co-owner Ron Connolly told me.
If the plan goes through as proposed, "the result for the city will be the retention of 155 existing city jobs and the creation of up to 70 additional positions within the next two years," Harold Epps, Mayor Kenney's commerce director, told me in an email confirming the deal.
Buyer and seller won't confirm the sale price, which also includes 15 proprietary medicines.
The plants had been threatened with closing, said Connolly, who credited the company's veteran skilled workforce, as well as Philadelphia city training funds and low-interest financing, for making the plants attractive to his company.
Epps said Frontida could collect "up to $200,000 in saleable tax credits" through Keystone Innovation Zone programs, plus city job-training funds and job-creation tax credits, based on how many people end up working at the plants.
Connolly and Frontida chief executive Song Li worked together at the former Wyeth Pharmaceuticals before setting up their own contract research and manufacturing businesses. Frontage Labs employs 450, including 250 in Exton, 75 at sites in New Jersey, and the rest in Suzhou and Shanghai, China.
Connolly said Frontage has worked with researchers at Penn, Drexel, Fox Chase, and Temple to get its drugs through FDA reviews.
Seller Sun Pharmaceuticals bought the plants from Japan-based Takeda Pharmaceuticals in 2012, after Takeda bought Mutual's best-known product, gout treatment Colcrys, along with Mutual's owner, URL Pharma, from founder Richard Roberts for $800 million.
At the time, URL claimed 500 employees, plus 350 outside salespeople. But the separation from Takeda and Colcrys put its future in doubt, as my colleague David Sell wrote at the time.
Connolly said he's glad for the opportunity to grow in the city.
"I went to Drexel, I lived my whole life in Philadelphia, and I really want to see this company succeed," he told me.
"Ron Connolly is really interested in developing this industry," affirmed John Grady, president of Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp.
He said PIDC typically lends up to $40,000 per job "created and retained" at low-interest rates for companies that expand here.
Grady said Frontida sees the city as a base for "logistics, distribution, redevelopment and equipment purchase." It's a "very typical investment for us, particularly in the manufacturing sector," he added. PIDC, which seeks to make land acquisition and financing easier for the city's remaining industrial employers and developers, is co-owned by the city and its Chamber of Commerce.
Grady compared Frontida to Wuxi, the China-based pharma giant that purchased Philadelphia's Navy Yard-based Apptec Laboratory Services in 2008, and has been expanding there ever since.
Besides Apptec's original 75,000-square-foot building (built by Liberty Property Trust in 2006), Wuxi has added a 46,000-square-foot manufacturing plant and is constructing a third 145,000-square-foot R&D and manufacturing center.
Wuxi does contract research and production, focusing particularly on T-cell manufacturing, immunotherapy, and genetics.
The city is treating Frontida as confirmation of its continued attraction as a drug research and development center, anchored by its university hospitals. "We have worldwide leading scientists developing these therapies, and the flow of dollars is a result," Grady told me.
Citing also the recent Penn research partnership with Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen, Grady said the city "has strong competitive advantages" in medicine and pharma.
(215)854-5194 @PhillyJoeD