The former Ben Venue Laboratories facility in Bedford will be reopening. A Danish drug company has bought a large part of the shuttered manufacturing complex and will bring 170 jobs to the Cleveland suburb. Kevin Niedermier of Ohio Public Radio station WKSU reports.
Xellia Pharmaceuticals of Copenhagen plans to make infection-fighting drugs at the facility, which closed nearly two years ago. The purchase price is not known.
Ben Venue had been making a cancer drug there, but shut down after years of quality and production problems.
Bedford Mayor Stanely Koci is happy for the new jobs, which he says will be phased in gradually.
“They estimate it’ll take about two years to reach production,” he said. “And that’s obviously when they start hiring a lot more people when they get to that production phase. So it’ll start small and grow. And hopefully they’ll hit on a couple of good drugs that will allow them to expand their business.”
When Ben Venue was operating at full capacity, it employed 1,100 people. Koci said the $2.3 million in tax revenues it generated accounted for more than 20 percent of the city’s operating budget.