While emphasizing the sale has not yet been finalized, the head of the Calgary-based company that has reached a "tentative purchase agreement" to buy Olds’ Banner Pharmacaps plant said he hopes to keep as many of the plant’s current emplo
While emphasizing the sale has not yet been finalized, the head of the Calgary-based company that has reached a "tentative purchase agreement" to buy Olds’ Banner Pharmacaps plant said he hopes to keep as many of the plant’s current employees working as possible.
"They will be our first pick. The question is whether or not we can retain all of them in the short term. We’ll make every effort to retain as many as we can. But that’s all going to take place during this process of Patheon taking the facility down to a point where they can walk away and we can walk in," said Clark Sayer, the general manager of Calgary-based Advanced Orthomolecular Research (AOR).
Patheon Inc., a pharmaceutical company headquartered in North Carolina that bought Banner in December for $255 million US, announced on Sept. 27 that it had reached an agreement with AOR, which produces vitamin supplements, for the sale of the plant. Patheon had announced in March that it will permanently close the Olds plant on Oct. 31, the same day the sale is expected to close. The plant has operated in Olds for 32 years and develops and manufactures soft gel pharmaceutical and nutritional products and Sayer said his company, which he described as a "nutraceutical company," will continue producing nutritional soft gel products at the plant once the deal is finalized.
Since this is the first time AOR will produce soft gels, Sayer said it is likely the expertise of the plant’s current personnel will be necessary if AOR takes over operations.
"I don’t have anybody on my staff that I could send up there and with any confidence that they had a higher degree of experience or knowledge on how to make soft gels than (Banner plant manager) Logan (Naidoo) and the rest of his staff."
As of Sept. 27, 105 people were working at the plant.
Sayer said AOR and Patheon are in the midst of working out a number of external and internal issues to finalize the sale before the end of the month.
"None of them at this point appear to be insurmountable," he said. "I don’t really see any reason why the deal won’t go forward but I also don’t believe in absolutes perhaps short of death and taxes."
If the deal is finalized, he added, the company aims to have production at the plant back up and running as soon as possible.
"Our long-term plan is to return the facility to full capacity and even beyond that if we can do so. But it won’t be an overnight thing."
Doug Rieberger, president of the Olds Chamber of College, said the news that the plant will likely sell and will continue running is a "win-win" situation for Olds.
"I think it’s good news for the economy of Olds," he said. "It’s never good for a town, economy-wise, to have facilities (closed) around town because the other thing is when people start looking at relocating, if businesses are seeing a lot of empty buildings around town and stuff like that, then it doesn’t look like a good economic fit for them."
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