WuXi STA expects to hire about 500 people in the coming years to support Phase 1 of the manufacturing campus.
A Chinese pharmaceutical company is moving forward with plans to build a massive $510 million manufacturing campus in northern Delaware, despite selling off part of its U.S. operations over the past month.
WuXi AppTec agreed in December to sell the U.S. and United Kingdom operations of its WuXi Advanced Therapies unit, which include a major presence at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, to New York health care investment firm Altaris. On Friday, the company entered into a deal to sell its U.S. medical device testing operations in St. Paul and Atlanta to NAMSA of Toledo, Ohio.
Both deals came amid uncertainty over proposed federal legislation, known as the Biosecure Act, that could restrict WuXi AppTec's business dealings with U.S. companies.
WuXi AppTec, however, is not halting its plans to build a 1.74 million-square-foot campus for its WuXi STA subsidiary at a site about an hour south of Philadelphia in Middletown, Delaware.
In an internal WuXi AppTec document obtained by the Business Journal, Rick Connell, WuXi AppTec's president for the U.S. and Europe, said the company's U.S. operations will continue to play a "vital role" in the growth of its contract research and development manufacturing operations business and investment strategy over the coming years.
“This year, we will advance construction of WuXi STA’s new state-of-the-art pharmaceutical manufacturing campus in Delaware so we can launch operations there in 2026,” Connell said in the document, which was distributed to U.S. employees. “We expect to hire some 500 new WuXi AppTec team members in the upcoming years to support Phase I operations at that facility.”
The first phase of the project, now under construction, was originally scheduled to open in 2024.
Connell said the company is also looking to identify additional U.S. locations where it can continue to invest in new WuXi AppTec facilities for drug discovery, development and manufacturing.
The Middletown campus, supported by a $19 million state grant, will occupy 190 acres and seven buildings for research labs and for manufacturing and packaging active pharmaceutical ingredients. WuXi said the campus is expected to eventually house 1,000 employees.
Delaware's incentive package to land the project includes $15.3 million for construction costs, plus $3.25 million to hire 479 employees and $500,000 to train them.
WuXi Biologics, a separate and independent company, has operations at Discovery Labs in King of Prussia.
At the Navy Yard in South Philadelphia, WuXi Advanced Therapies occupies nearly 400,000 square feet with about 800 employees in three buildings owned by Ensemble Investments and Maxxam Enterprises.
In this region, WuXi Apptec’s customers include Amicus Therapeutics, which is based in Princeton and has its global research and gene therapy center in Philadelphia; San Carlos, California-based Iovance, which has its cell therapy manufacturing operations at the Navy Yard; and Philadelphia life sciences firms Cabaletta Bio and Spark Therapeutics.
The future of the Biosecure Act is unclear. The legislation was passed by the House of Representatives last year but stalled in the Senate. It calls for prohibiting U.S. pharmaceutical and biotech companies that receive federal funding from working with five Chinese services firms because of concerns about national security. Those firms are WuXi AppTec, WuXi Biologics, BGI Group, MGI, and Complete Genomics.
Commenting on the proposed legislation last year, a WuXi AppTec spokesman said the company strongly objects "to any unjustified allegations or preemptive actions against WuXi AppTec without due process, including the proposed designation in the Biosecure Act. We operate in a highly regulated industry and fully comply with the strict reporting, oversight and/or inspection requirements of our customers and multiple government agencies.”
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