AMPAC Fine Chemicals announced a $25 million expansion of its operations that is expected to add more than 150 new jobs.
The California-based company is a top U.S. manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients. The plant in Petersburg previously was owned by Boehringer Ingelheim Chemicals Inc., which closed it in 2014, but AMPAC reopened the site in 2019.
AMPAC employs about 100 people at the site now, having hired about 50 employees this year to ramp up production of pharmaceutical ingredients. The company expects to add the additional 150 jobs over the next two to three years.
The AMPAC plant is part of a larger, planned node of pharmaceutical manufacturing. The Richmond-based pharmaceutical development company Phlow Corp., which has a partnership with AMPAC, also is planning a production facility adjacent to the AMPAC plant.
Founded last year, Phlow has developed manufacturing processes that reduce the cost of production for active pharmaceutical ingredients. In May 2020, Phlow announced it had received a $354 million federal contract to help build a national, strategic reserve of essential medicines and to make active ingredients for more than a dozen medicines used to treat patients with COVID-19.
Another participant in the pharmaceutical manufacturing partnership is Civica Inc., a nonprofit organization formed by various U.S. health care providers to address chronic, generic drug shortages.
Civica announced in January that it plans to invest $124.5 million to establish its first in-house pharmaceutical manufacturing operation also on Normandy Drive in Petersburg.