ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 12, 1996 TAG: 9610140038
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
THE GENERIC pharmaceuticals company is accelerating building plans in Bedford County.
Barr Laboratories Inc., a maker of generic pharmaceuticals, has speeded up plans to build a 100,000-square-foot packaging and warehouse building next to its new manufacturing facility in Bedford County.
Friday, as the company announced the accelerated project, contractors already were pouring footers for the building.
The facility is a year ahead of schedule and is part of a companywide $40 million expansion that will be carried out in the next few years, officials said.
In January, the Pamona, N.Y.-based company bought 50 acres and a 65,700-square-foot building on Virginia 663. It paid $2.3 million to Galileo Electro-Optics Corp. of Sturbridge, Mass. It is renovating the building and expects to be manufacturing cancer and hormone drugs there by April 1997.
The warehouse facility initially was scheduled as a 1998 project. Now Barr said it expects to open the warehouse by next summer.
The Bedford County project represents an investment of more than $20 million, said Bruce Downey, Barr's president, chairman and chief executive officer.
When the plant is up to full operation, it should be generating as much as a billion doses of drugs a year, he said.
Downey also announced a $5,000 gift to Corporation for Jefferson's Poplar Forest, which oversees the retreat that Thomas Jefferson designed and built in Forest.
Poplar Forest, which is open to the public, is a few miles from the Barr plant. Downey said the donation recognizes the historical heritage and quality of life of the area, which was part of what attracted the company to Bedford County.
The company earlier gave a $5,000 scholarship to the top science student in this year's graduating class from nearby Jefferson Forest High School.
Barr currently has four employees at the Bedford site. Plant manager Edwin Moor, who has been hired from a competitor, Dupont Merck, will move to Bedford in a few weeks, said Barr spokesman Charles Mayr.
The facility will employ about 120 workers, and Mayr said recruitment will begin in the fall.
Barr has 350 employees at two manufacturing plants in New York and New Jersey. The company, which was founded in 1970, placed 23rd on Fortune magazine's recent list of the fastest growing companies.
Barr reported 1996 sales of nearly $232 million. Its stock, traded on the American Stock Exchange, closed Friday at $28 a share, down 121/2 cents.
To woo the company to Virginia, Bedford County matched a $125,000 grant awarded to Barr from the Governor's Opportunity Fund for landscaping, lighting, and roadway and parking improvements at the site. Bedford also got a $700,000 construction grant from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development to build a four-mile natural gas pipeline to the Barr site.
In addition, Barr will receive work force training assistance from the state Department of Economic Development as well as a one-time state tax credit of about $20,000 based on the number of workers it will employ.
The company ranks among the top 10 independent U.S. manufacturers of generic drugs, based on its 1995 sales of $199.7 million.
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