Dive Brief:
- San Diego-based biotechnology company National Resilience will expand its manufacturing operations in West Chester, Ohio.
- The company committed to adding 440 new jobs over the next three years with a total annual payroll of nearly $29 million, the company said in its Dec. 11 announcement.
- The expansion is set to nearly double National Resilience’s current presence in West Chester, according to JobsOhio President and CEO J.P. Nauseef, who worked with the company on the plan.
Dive Insight:
The West Chester site was purchased from drug manufacturing giant AstraZeneca back in January, with National Resilience agreeing to continue producing certain AstraZeneca medicines at the facility.
The facility is intended to be National Resilience’s “global center of excellence for commercial drug product manufacturing,” company CEO, Rahul Singhvi, said in a statement.
The expansion will support a wide variety of jobs, including manufacturing, engineering, quality control, IT and management. Of the 440 jobs, 274 will be direct employees and 166 will be contracted employees.
National Resilience has quickly scaled up its business in North America since its founding in 2020 with approximately $800 million in capital. It now operates a dozen facilities including the West Chester site, in addition to sites currently under development in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
This year, the drug manufacturer sought to raise even more capital by selling a manufacturing site in Marlborough, Massachusetts, while scaling back operations at another in Allston, Massachusetts, in February. The scale-down resulted in 213 job cuts.
News of the expansion in Ohio also comes after National Resilience secured $410 million in long-term loan financing from the Department of Defense in collaboration with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation in March.
The financing is being used to expand National Resilience's domestic manufacturing capacity for biologics, including antibodies, proteins and multi-specifics, vaccines and nucleic acids, according to the press release.
In addition to expanding capacity, the money aims to “secure the nation’s supply chain for vaccines and critical medicines, bolster pandemic preparedness and response, and help address a critical advanced manufacturing infrastructure shortage revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
