Brantford Chemicals, a division of Toronto-based Apotex Group, is pursuing a $13.9-million expansion, spearheaded by company president Dr. Keshava Murthy (inset).

New Lease on
Life Sciences

Ontario's stake in the life sciences is substantial. It's home to the third largest regional concentration of biotech firms in North America; the province ranks sixth in revenues earned and is among the top 10 states or provinces in R&D expenditures. In June, Toronto hosted the BIO2002 conference, which attracted biotech and pharmaceutical companies and economic developers courting them from around the world.
        Brantford Chemicals, a unit of the Apotex Group of companies, announced in August a $13.9-million expansion of its Brantford, Ont., facility that will double its R&D capabilities and create 90 jobs. Having an existing facility and infrastructure already in place dissuaded the company's president, Dr. Keshava Murthy, from considering other locations. "It seemed logical to invest more at the Brantford site and make it a center of excellence. Brantford is in a relatively central location, and there are 10 major universities in a less-than-100-kilometer radius," he points out. Access to parent company Apotex is another benefit of the Brantford location, an hour's drive southwest of Toronto, as is access to the U.S. market.
        A new manufacturing center, a solvent tank farm and a facility for work that takes place between research and development and manufacturing are among the buildings being developed in the $6.3-million, initial phase of the project. "In the future, we expect to build support facilities for the plant," says Murthy.
        "Building pharmaceutical chemicals is a very knowledge-intensive industry," Murthy points out, "and there is a relatively small amount of this skill set in Canada. By building this facility, we believe we are expanding this skill set to a level where it will be more on par with the rest of the world."
        TorPharm (Toronto Pharmaceuticals), another Apotex subsidiary, is expanding a 120,000-sq.-ft. (11,150-sq.-m.) facility near Toronto's Pearson International Airport. An expansion that began in the mid-1990s brought the total to 200,000 sq. ft. (18,580 sq. m.) used for manufacturing, R&D and warehousing.

        "We have outgrown that and began late last year a $250 million (US$157.6-million) project to add another 330,000 sq. ft. [30,600 sq. m.] of space," says Dr. David Coffin-Beach, president of the company. "We were really cramped. We had a 1,500-pallet warehouse that was built as part of the phase two expansion, which was grossly inadequate. So we've built a 10,700-pallet warehouse with internal cranes, which we occupied in October. The production facilities will be turned over to us in December 2003, and we'll be in production in June 2004."
        The Apotex headquarters in North York is nearby, and college graduates are in good supply. "We're not really suffering for people," says Coffin-Beach, who sees a long future for the Apotex companies in Canada. "[Apotex chairman and founder] Dr. Sherman is a Canadian first and foremost, and is nationalistic in his view that multinational companies take their profits back to their home country. It's his vision to be the largest generic manufacturer in the country with the benefits then of manufacturing coming back to Canada by virtue of siting manufacturing here in Canada for the entire world."