Mayne Pharma Announces Expansion
The Daily Reflector
by Joe Pellegrino
GREENVILLE, NC (August 27, 2015 ) Mayne Pharma, the parent company of Metrics Contract Services, will invest $65 million to expand facilities and equipment at its site in Greenville.
The company’s plans include the construction of a 126,000-square-foot, large-scale, oral-dose manufacturing facility, along with the repurposing of space to expand contract services.
When the new facility becomes fully operational in 2018, it will more than double Mayne Pharma’s manufacturing capacity in the United States. The company, which employs 350 people in North Carolina, anticipates hiring up to 110 more scientists, quality assurance specialists, manufacturing operators and technicians.
“Expanding our Greenville operations solidifies Mayne Pharma’s aspirations in the U.S. market while building our talented workforce,” Stefan Cross, president of Mayne Pharma USA, said. “Once operational, we can take on new and larger products, specifically those that rely upon our company’s drug-delivery and potent handling expertise.”
Mayne Pharma will construct the facility on its Indigreen Corporate Park campus that houses Mayne Pharma’s products business, along with its contract development and manufacturing business, Metrics Contract Services. Founded in Greenville in 1994, Metrics started as a laboratory providing analytical chemistry support services to pharmaceutical companies. The company steadily grew into a full-service pharmaceutical development and manufacturing organization that also develops, manufactures and markets branded and generic drug products.
Metrics was acquired in 2012 by Mayne Pharma, a publicly held specialty pharmaceutical company headquartered in Adelaide, Australia. Today, Mayne Pharma’s operations in the United States consist of:
- Metrics Contract Services, which provides contract pharmaceutical development services to third parties globally,
- U.S. Generic Products, which develops, manufactures, markets and distributes generic drug products, and
- U.S. Specialty Brands, which is responsible for the marketing and distribution of branded pharmaceuticals within the United States.
The new facility — which will be constructed to meet international regulatory standards — will allow Mayne Pharma to expand development, manufacturing and packaging operations for generic and specialty drug products, and expand services to Metrics clients with commercial manufacturing requirements.
The increase in capacity — and the introduction of commercial-scale manufacturing of modifiedrelease and highly potent drug products — will support on-market products, as well as a robust pipeline of products under development, enabling Mayne Pharma to become a global leader in advanced oral drug delivery systems, Cross said.
The company has been working with state and local governmental agencies in support of this capital expansion and secured funding and incentives worth up to $2.7 million. The expansion is made possible in part by a performance-based grant of $550,000 from the One North Carolina Fund, which provides financial assistance, through local governments, to attract business projects that will stimulate economic activity and create new jobs within the state.
Gov. Pat McCrory, N.C. Commerce Secretary John E. Skvarla III, and officials at the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina officially unveiled the expansion plans Wednesday.
“Mayne Pharma has a 30-year track record of innovation and success in developing pharmaceutical products, and the company’s plans to expand facilities and services in eastern North Carolina are key to its business development efforts worldwide,” McCrory said. “This important expansion speaks volumes about the appeal our state has for companies at every stage of their growth.”
Several state and local organizations worked with the N.C. Commerce Department and EDPNC in supporting Mayne Pharma’s expansion plans. They include: the commerce division of Rural Economic Development, the N.C. Community College System, Pitt Community College, Golden LEAF, Pitt County, the Pitt County Development Commission, the Pitt County Committee of 100, the City of Greenville and the Greenville Utilities Commission.
“We greatly appreciate the state of North Carolina’s confidence in our future, and anticipate that our growth will benefit Greenville, Pitt County, North Carolina and beyond,” Cross said.
