PCI Pharma Services plans new $50M facility, bringing 250 jobs to Rockford

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — PCI Pharma Services plans to build a $50 million, 200,000-square-foot facility on the city’s south end to bolster its capacity to assemble products used in the treatment of diabetes, obesity and autoimmune diseases.

The new facility will be in the 4900 block of Linden Road east of the Interstate 39 Bypass on land owned by Cord Construction Co. The project goes before the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals next week, and it has the support of staff at City Hall. The company plans to move forward with construction after City Council approval with hopes of bringing the facility online in summer 2024.

“Anytime that you’re talking about $50 million worth of investment for a new manufacturing site in Rockford that’s wonderful news,” Mayor Tom McNamara said. “We know that PCI has just been a tremendous employer and also really a wonderful corporate citizen to our community.”

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The land is in an Enterprise Zone, a state economic development tool which provides tax break incentives such as an exemption on sales tax for building materials and tax credit deductions on taxable income. Staff at City Hall, as well as Cord Construction and PCI have been working on the plans quietly for months.

“This is exactly what we’ve been working with Cord for years to position this for, something of this PCI order,” said Karl Franzen, the city’s director of community and economic development. “We have a long relationship with PCI … We’ve always been supportive of their growth within the city.”

PCI’s Rockford operation, which includes its facility at 4545 Assembly Drive, is the largest of its 30 locations across the U.S., European and Asia Pacific regions. Its expansion with a new facility here is expected to add 250 jobs to the region in the next two years, with anticipated continued growth in three to five years.

The facility will have more than 20 customer suites with multiformat machines designed for assembling and packaging vials, prefilled syringes, auto-injectors and pen-cartridge combinations. The machinery can be used for drugs prescribed to treat diabetes and obesity, as well as those needed for oncology treatment and autoimmune diseases, the company said.

“We see the tremendous impact that we can make with patients with this investment,” said Salim Haffar, CEO of PCI Pharma Services, in a news release. “The need for injectable drug-delivery device combination product capacity and expertise is critical, and we are responding with a world-class facility to address the future demands of our global clients so they can focus on developing therapies to improve the lives of patients with serious chronic conditions.”

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The new Rockford facility will have extensive product-testing capability, cartoning technology and injector and pen assembly equipment. It will also include cold storage, high-speed vial labeling and other assembly and packaging functions.

“With this new facility, we will be able to serve all clients focused on injectable drug products including biologics with the equipment and capacity to make life-changing medicines,” Gil Valadez, senior vice president of commercial packaging technology for PCI Pharma Services, said in a news release. “We want to help our clients by managing the technical aspects of drug manufacturing, engineering, and delivery, so they can focus on what’s most important: delivering quality products to meet patient needs. That’s what PCI is ultimately all about.”

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas