Japanese pharmaceutical company Kyowa Kirin will build a manufacturing facility in Lee County, according to press releases from Governor Roy Cooper and the Sanford Area Growth Alliance.
The location will be Kyowa Kirin’s first North American manufacturing operation and is expected to create 102 jobs with a $200 million tax base investment. The average wage for the jobs is $91,496. Kyowa Kirin will purchase land in the new Helix Innovation Park on Hawkins Avenue for the manufacturing facility, which is expected to be complete in four years. Kyowa Kirin’s current projects include engineering the next generation of antibodies and cell and gene therapies with the potential to help patients with high unmet medical needs, including bone/mineral, blood cancers, intractable hematologic diseases, and rare diseases.
“I am pleased to welcome Kyowa Kirin to Lee County for its next phase of growth,” Cooper said. “North Carolina’s leadership as a life sciences powerhouse for research and manufacturing aligns well with this company’s reputation for creating innovative treatments, and we believe they will find great success here.”
The announcement follows the passage of about $8.5 million in combined tax incentives for Kyowa Kirin from the Lee County Board of Commissioners and the Sanford City Council last week. At the state level, the project will be facilitated in part by a Job Development Investment Grant which makes Kyowa Kirin eligible for up to $1,611,000 in tax reimbursements over 12 years. Incentives from both state and local government only occur following performance verification by the departments of Commerce and Revenue that the company has met its incremental job creation and investment targets. Until Tuesday’s announcement, the name of the company had been a closely held secret, referred to in public meetings only as “Project BioBloom.”
“We are excited that Kyowa Kirin chose Lee County, further expanding our local life sciences industry,” said Kirk Smith, chairman of the Lee County Board of Commissioners. “We look forward to the beneficial economic impact for our community as well the future tax benefits for our citizens. The County’s investment in strategic economic development through the Sanford Area Growth Alliance continues to pay dividends.”
“Congratulations to Kyowa Kirin on the siting of their first North American biomanufacturing facility here in Sanford,” said Mayor Rebecca Wyhof Salmon. “Our City is thrilled to welcome a company so strategically focused on the manufacturing of life-saving and life-changing treatments for patients. Kyowa Kirin will be an excellent addition to our growing Life Sciences Community. We look forward to a strong and lasting relationship. We have worked hard as a City to create an environment that not only is business friendly but also a place where company team members can live, work, and flourish and this announcement validates that effort. Best wishes and a heartfelt welcome to Sanford.”
“The Sanford Area Growth Alliance enthusiastically welcomes Kyowa Kirin to the Sanford-Lee County community, where public and private sectors work together to grow and diversify the business community, increase opportunities for our workforce and improve the quality of life for our citizens,” said SAGA Chairman Jimmy Keen. “Kyowa Kirin’s decision to locate here is an endorsement of our organization’s team effort and our strong reputation at regional, state and national levels.”
“With their decision to locate at Helix Innovation Park at the Brickyard, Kyowa Kirin adds another valuable facet to Lee County’s already impressive life sciences manufacturing cluster,” said SAGA CEO Jimmy Randolph. “Their operation will complement the globally significant gene therapy manufacturing hub anchored by Pfizer, one of Lee County’s largest and longest-tenured employers, and Astellas Gene Therapies, further enhancing Sanford and Lee County’s contributions to the Research Triangle Region’s reputation as the nation’s leading biomanufacturing center.”
Because Kyowa Kirin chose a site in Lee County, classified by the state’s economic tier system as Tier 2, the company’s JDIG agreement also calls for moving $179,000 into the state’s Industrial Development Fund – Utility Account. The Utility Account helps rural communities finance necessary infrastructure upgrades to attract future business.
“Kyowa Kirin has a long and proud history of advancing novel discoveries from bench to bedside. Establishing a new center of excellence for biologics manufacturing in North America is a testament to the promising potential we see in our pipeline,” said Paul Testa, executive vice president of supply chain & manufacturing for North America. “We believe the Sanford facility will become a vital part of our global manufacturing network – helping us train employees, deliver medicines with life-changing value, and support our future growth as a region and as a global business.”
It’s not worth the amount of job to bring another pharma company to sanford. You can’t spell pharmaceutical without harm. They keep you sick in order to make money. If pills really worked everyone would be cured. But usually, you have to take another pill for the side effects.
cooper pops out every time his CCP buddies need him and Sanford is more than willing to help him and the CCP to kill you with drugs.
TRUMP WILL BE IN GREENSBORO, NC ON SATURDAY, MARCH 2…VOTE TRUMP!!!!
I bet $100 you’re the same Connie that stands in front of her house and yells at cars as they drive by. Interrupt any funerals lately?
“Vote Trump” it’s amazing how many people put their faith solely in the hands of millionaire politicians. Does Connie believe Trump has ever done charitable work, or is he the type to flaunt his wealth with gold plated everything, like a wealthy pharmaceutical rep? Come back to reality Connie, almost all politicians are crooks, both left and right.
We don’t need this in Lee county , we need to focus on road construction for the traffic jams caused by all the new housing and low income apartments going in and nobody is even mentioned building a new school which is also going to be desperately needed so how about we work on that before we allow another Pharma company to come in and give them incentives and taxpayers dollars that could be used wisely elsewhere…
Just my opinion
The companies pay for their incentives by the property taxes they generate. That is what it being plowed back to them. It’s not your tax dollar per se because without them the tax dollar is never created.
since we’ve lived here Sanford, and Lee County have given breaks to big companies that move here, thinking they will live here and bring money in, but Lee county is so small they can live outside of Lee county and do business elsewhere. They aren’t going to pay any taxes, just like all the other companies that have moved here haven’t. Soon the evil bad people that are here will be arrested and be gone and we can fix what is wrong with Sanford and Lee county, and the good ole boys. Lee County needs to be part of Chatham County once more, this is just a place for evil men to get away with things and for good people to do nothing and look the other way, as long as they don’t get hurt. Fix the Sanford Police Department, nobody should be working as top dog for 40 years.
More jobs and more tax base is good, I just wish someone would force these companies to handle their waste responsibly so they stopped polluting the drinking water.
I just want to say, though, I really think that the actual guys working at the water utility here seem to be good people who are really on the ball. There aren’t any laws requiring them to do all this PFAS testing and publish the results. The EPA has completely dropped the ball on PFAS and other “emerging contaminants”. But the people at the water utility here are doing the tests and putting the info out into the world, which is probably all they personally have the power to do.
By contrast, Durham hides its PFAS numbers in various ways, and other localities just won’t do as much testing.
So the problem is with layers of government outside of the utility itself. The guys at the water utility can’t make the factories stop dumping chemicals into the river, that would take action from the city and/or state. All the utility can do is to tell us about it, which they do very well.
“V” is a one trick pony – always going on about the water. Makes one wonder why “V” doesn’t move to an area where the water is more suitable.
You want to drink cancer water, go ahead. But other people should at least know about the problem.
You are correct, for the most part. It isn’t the hard-working people in the trucks, for the most part, it those people that sit behind a desk. Cut OUR taxes IF you are getting somuch from these other companies, this place should look like Cary, or Holly Springs or Pinehurst, for the size of the county and the amount of taxes that is “supposed” to be coming into Lee County and Sanford from all these big companies. Go look, we have a tone of BIG companies here, did you know that 3M is IN lee county, did you know those two Phara companies have been put in the Sanford city limits and they will have their own fire department? We are paying for all that. And those electric batteries or whatever was supposed to happen here, they are taking OUR water and Chatham County has the company.
And please tell me what YEAR do these companies START paying these taxes? In ten or twenty years?
Yes, we will need more schools, low income housing for seniors , & grocery stores !
We now need affordable housing for almost everyone that isn’t making $100,000 per year. I don’t know about grocery stores.
$100,000 a yr isn’t nothing in today’s economy.
Tramway will need another grocery store when these apts fill up, also, why has work on the proposed Sheetz in tramway stopped ??
because they forgot about that stop signal, they are going to put there to jam you up, just like it looks on Hwy 55 in Holly Springs by the Target. They want to “look” like the nice cities and big in the money, but these people don’t know HOW!
How about that private school jamming traffic up EVERY afternoon so they and their kids can get in and out of school onto US1, with OUR Sheriffs? Do they pay extra to use our Sheriffs? They should. And when we have to slow down for THEIR school, they should slow down for our streets.
Mental health services are available in Lee County. Some people should seek them out.
What’s your deal, Constance?
It’s great that we’re getting more pharmaceutical companies that would mean more medicine to the sick and a booming economy as the medicine tends to be expensive. But surely should be affordable as time goes on