State officials joined executives from Curia on Thursday to break ground on an expansion expected to add more than 270 jobs at the company's Albuquerque location.
Curia, a drug product manufacturer headquartered in Albany, New York, will boost its production capabilities with the 65,000-square-foot expansion at its Alexander Boulevard facility. The project will add a high-speed sterile fill-finish vial line which is expected to become operational in 2025, according to a news release. High-speed sterile fill-finish essentially means sterilizing the drug product, container and closure before they are brought together, Business First previously reported.
The company also plans to add an isolated flexible filling line for vials, syringes and cartridges at a second Albuquerque facility on Balloon Park Road.
In all, Curia plans to invest more than $100 million into the property. That investment, along with $5 million in incentives from the state's Local Economic Development Act job-creation fund, is expected to yield an economic impact of more than $1 billion over the next decade, according to the release. The company anticipates hiring an additional 274 employees at an average salary of over $50,000 a year, according to the news release.
“New Mexico has become a sophisticated biosciences hub that continues to attract companies leading the way in global science and health care,” said New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who attended Thursday's event along with Economic Development Department Secretary Alicia J. Keyes and Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller.
The expansion is part of an effort to support U.S. production of medicines that can be injected. A cooperative agreement between Curia and the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the U.S. Army Contracting Command included some money for the high-speed sterile fill-finish vial line.
As of March, the company reportedly employed about 400 people in Albuquerque where it supports the supply of vaccines and treatments for cancer, cardiovascular diseases and other types of disease. In all, the company now has 3,700 employees across Asia, Europe and the U.S.
Formerly known as AMRI, the company announced an agreement with AstraZeneca in 2020 to support the production of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate with plans to add about 150 employees for vaccine production, vice president and general manager Jonathan Shoemaker previously told Business First. However, the AstraZeneca vaccine faced early setbacks during trials and has not received approval for use in the U.S. by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
