Roche Sells California Plant For Biologics - Reuters
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Roche Holding AG wants to sell or shut down a California manufacturing plant that makes biological drugs. This is what Reuters says, according to emails sent to workers.
The Swiss pharma company bought a plant in Vacaville, California over ten years ago. They got it through the Genentech acquisition in the United States. The plant makes cancer drugs like Avastin and Herceptin, and rheumatoid arthritis medicine called Actemra.
Roche will sell its site that produces small molecule active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) located in Spain. The company also manufactures monoclonal antibodies from genetically modified living cells at the site. Roche confirmed this news in a statement.
The plant won't need to make a lot of drugs anymore. The company wants to move this work to a newer place.
Roche announced that there won't be any immediate changes to their operations or employees. The manufacturing site will keep running while searching for a buyer. However, if they can't find one, they plan to gradually decrease operations and close the site by 2028-2029.
Roche is cutting jobs as its COVID-19 product sales have drastically decreased. In the first quarter of 2023, its COVID-19 antibody therapy, Ronapreve, made CHF676 million in sales which is a 12% decrease compared to the previous year when adjusted for forex changes. Roche collaborated with Regeneron to produce Ronapreve.
