HOLLY LENTE – Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies has selected Holly Springs for a huge new drug manufacturing facility and the creation of hundreds of jobs that pay average salaries of more than $ 95,000.
The news that the company is considering North Carolina for the plant appeared in January. According to North Carolina officials, Texas was also considered for the plant.
A version of the future Holly Springs facility as provided by Fujifilm.
“There was strong competition for this, but he ended up in the right place,” Governor Roy Cooper said of Fujifilm Diosynth CEO Martin Meeson during a Thursday afternoon ceremony in Holly Springs.
Meeson calls the planned plant a ‘major milestone’ for the company, which is part of the Japan-based Fuiji film. It will be the largest development and manufacturing facility for cell culture contracts in North America, he said.
“The excitement is about the amount of patients we will be able to target and the medicines we can bring to them in this facility,” he said. “This project is about the future and how we are going to deliver medicine in the coming decades.”
Fujifilm Diosynth already has a plant in Morrisville that makes more than 60 products, including treatments for prostate cancer, hereditary diseases and a possible vaccination against coronavirus created by Novavax. Former President Donald Trump visited the factory last year to see his administration’s vaccine development program.
The plant in Holly Springs will create approximately 725 jobs between 2024 and 2028, according to an agreement between Fujifilm Diosynth and the State Department of Commerce.
According to the agreement, the company will invest $ 1.5 billion by December 2024 and retain 637 jobs that are already based in the Triangle.
Another $ 500 million will be invested later.
“Identifying a place to find a bio-manufacturing project of this magnitude depends on the availability of highly educated people, a top-class business climate and a hyper-collaborative ecosystem, all within a strong, diverse group of life sciences. And the place is North Carolina, ”said Bill Bullock, senior vice president of economic development and operations throughout the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.
Fujifilm’s decision to build a new plant in Holly Springs is a major victory for the NC Life Sciences industry
“Holly Springs in particular is an exemplary community for developing and implementing a long-term strategy to attract life science jobs and investments, and goes back to Novartis’ decision to locate its vaccine campus there in 2006,” Bullock said.
The state’s economic investment committee has voted to approve millions of tax incentives for the project.
The postal news was the second big news for North Carolina on Thursday. Google had earlier announced that they had chosen Durham for a new computer engineering hub. About 1,000 jobs are expected to be added to that facility.
It’s the latest in a series of corporate investments announced this year, many of which are life science.
Triangle in conflict with Fujifilm’s $ 2 billion production plant