The company is currently headquartered in Craigavon, Northern Ireland and also has offices in the UK and the US, but it has now decided to plant its roots more firmly across the pond with its planned North American base in Pennsylvania.
Two of its five US facilities, Clinical Services and Clinical Technologies, are already located in this area and Almac received a total $9m in various grants from the state of Pennsylvania to help fund the expansion.
A spokesperson for the firm said that Almac made the decision to establish itself more firmly in the US because it has been operating successfully in the country for some time and the US is "the heart of the pharmaceutical industry."
Almac said its expansion project will be competed in several phases. Initially, the company will construct a 240,000 sq. ft building in Lower Salford Township and it will also gradually transfer its two existing Pennsylvania divisions located in Audubon, Montgomery County, and Yardley, Bucks County, to this new site, along with 500 existing employees.
Following the expansion the firm will create 262 new jobs, primarily in software programming and development and clinical trials management. Future expansion of the company's Sciences and Diagnostics divisions at this site is also a possibility, the spokesperson said.
Construction of the new site is scheduled to begin in 2008 and it is expected to be fully operationally in 2010.
In February Almac completed the expansion of its formulation facilities in order to provide a wider range of services to pharma and biotech companies, representing an investment of £5.4m (€8m) and creating 60 specialist jobs in formulation and development and analytical support.
According to a company spokesperson, Almac already provides a wide range of services for pharmaceutical companies on a commercial scale, but the new 10,500sq foot facility offers formulation development services in solid oral dosage forms from pre-clinical through pilot scale, allowing it to be more competitive in the formulation area.
