Content area
Full text
KALAMAZOO - Pfizer announced Monday that it plans to close its human health research and development operations in Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, and a small Esperion Group facility in Plymouth, and eliminate hundreds of jobs in the process. overall plans call for reducing manufacturing plants worldwide from 93 to 66 and cutting costs by $4 billion a year.
Pfizer is expected to cut 250 positions in Kalamazoo and 2,100 in the Ann Arbor area and transfer that work to Pfizer sites in Conneticut, Missouri, California and the United Kingdom. However, the company will maintain its very large drug manufacturing facility in Portage, as well as its animal health operations in Kalamazoo County, which is why the number of job losses there will be fewer.
George Erickcek, senior regional analyst with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, said that since Pfizer is closing manufacturing facilities in Omaha, Neb., and Brooklyn, N.Y., it's possible that some manufacturing activity could be incorporated into the Portage plant.
Although Pfizer hasn't confirmed that additional manufacturing jobs might come Portage's way, Southwest Michigan First, the economic development organization for the Kalamazoo region, believes that any compression in Pfizer's manufacturing capacity "means good things for the Portage Road facility," said CEO Ronald Kitchens.
Kitchens sees a silver lining in the cloud. He said the Pfizer scientists losing jobs in Kalamazoo work in the pre-clinical phase of testing and efficacy, and there is great demand among existing life sciences companies in the region for people with those skill sets.
"Companies that are hiring people with these skill sets...