More Pfizer plants axed as restructuring continues

The two sites in Arnprior, Ontario, and Lee's Summit, Missouri, have been dropped as part of Pfizer's multi-year review of all manufacturing operations that began in 2003 following the acquisition of Pharmacia.

After its merger with Warner Lambert in 2000, Pfizer acquired Pharmacia for $60bn (€47.1bn) in 2003 and has been trying to sort out its manufacturing network ever since.

Over the past three years Pfizer has announced plans to divest or close more than two dozen plants globally, reducing the number of its manufacturing facilities from 93 to 64.

"The company needs to transform its global manufacturing capabilities to match the type of new products emerging from our pipeline and overall product demand,"​ Pfizer spokeswoman Judy Sandlin Brooks told In-PharmaTechnologist.com.

"So there is an underlying trend, we are implementing a global initiative to adjust our production capacity."​

The Arnprior site manufactures and packages various prescription and over-the-counter products in tablet or capsule form, including Norvasc, Viagra, Reactine and Visine, but Pfizer says it can make these products now cheaper elsewhere and wants sites that can also make inhalable and injectable drugs.

Pfizer hopes to sell the facility and is currently in discussions with a company interested in acquiring the site, yet should these discussions not lead to an acquisition, the company will initiate a marketing programme to sell it.

If Pfizer is unable to sell the facility in Arnprior, approximately 175 positions will be eliminated while 20 posts will be moved to the company's operations elsewhere.

There is no hope however for the 165 workers of the Lee's Summit facility as the plant will complete production in December after Pfizer spent two years trying to sell it without success.

That site manufactures animal health products such as Dectomax, an antiparisitic for livestock, and Revolution, a flea/tick heartworm medication for companion animals.

Equipment and other assets will be removed early next year and the buildings will be demolished by the end of 2007.

The property will be restored to a natural state and Pfizer will continue to work with local and national groups to find potential buyers for the property, which totals about 84 acres.

It is however unlikely that Pfizer's manufacturing consolidation will end here since many of its key drugs are coming off patent, resulting in a drop in sales by as much as 80 to 90 per cent of their original revenue and making it commercially unattractive to continue production in several sites.

Patents will expire on four of Pfizer's top-selling drugs by 2012, and as these products generated $22bn of the company's $51bn in revenue last year, their decline is bound to take a toll on manufacturing operations.