After multiple expansion forays overseas this year, biomanufacturing outfit National Resilience is returning to its American roots with plans to beef up production and add hundreds of new jobs at a recently purchased plant in Ohio.
Resilience is expanding operations at the West Chester, Ohio, facility it bought from AstraZeneca in January, the technology-focused contract manufacturer said Monday. In turn, the company expects to create some 440 new jobs with an associated annual payroll of nearly $29 million over the next three years.
The project represents a partnership between Resilience, JobsOhio and Cincinnati’s Regional Economic Development Initiative (REDI), the company noted.
All told, the plan is set to nearly double Resilience’s current presence in West Chester, according to JobsOhio president and CEO J.P. Nauseef. In the company’s press release, Resilience’s CEO Rahul Singhvi pointed out that the West Chester site serves as the CDMO’s global center of excellence for commercial drug product manufacturing.
Of the 440 new hires in Ohio, 274 will be direct employees of Resilience while the remaining 166 will be contracted workers. To bolster its own ranks, Resilience says it’s looking for staffers to fill a wide variety of jobs, from manufacturing engineering and quality control to information technology and management.
Other details on the project were slim, with Resilience simply alluding to “further development” of its biomanufacturing site in West Chester.
Resilience, still relatively young, came onto the biopharma manufacturing scene in 2020 armed with more than $800 million in capital. The company moved quickly to build out a network of nearly a dozen sites in North America, simultaneously picking up contracts with high-profile pharma clients such as bluebird, Takeda and Moderna.
Over the course of 2023, the company has expanded beyond North America’s borders, too, setting up shop in both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
As for the West Chester plant, Resilience revealed it was purchasing the site from AstraZeneca in late 2022. As part of the purchase, Resilience and AZ forged a “long-term” biomanufacturing deal under which Resilience is on deck to crank out select AstraZeneca medicines.
The site is a 580,000-square-foot, commercial-scale facility with end-to-end drug product manufacturing capabilities. The West Chester site also features a virtual reality training center.
Though the company has quickly made a name for itself in the world of biopharma production, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for National Resilience.
Back in February, the company confirmed it was axing around 213 roles in Boston. Still, the move wasn’t meant to be read as an omen of Resilience’s overall health, co-founder and CEO Singhvi told Fierce Pharma at the time.
The reduction was a “function of transition” tied to the end of a manufacturing contract with Sanofi, with Resilience angling to eventually bring workers back once volumes increase at its Boston site, the CEO explained.
Resilience hasn’t had to deal with similar problems in West Chester, where Singhvi said “volume came very fast” in the wake of the AZ accord.