Wednesday, July 24, 2024

The End Draws Nigh, For Merck's Legacy Cherokee Plant, On The Susquehanna, In PA -- 300 Jobs Ending At Year-End.


We have reported on this for 14 years, now minimum. The ups and downs, the sale to a minority-owned vendor, the repurchase of the same by Merck. All of it -- at least 20 stories. [Just search "Cherokee" in the box.]

Well, it seems that the storied over 400 acre complex for processing APIs / making antibiotics. . . has finally taken its last lap, as a life-science facility. Here's the latest from The Daily Item, a local newspaper's overnight online edition:

. . .In 2011, seven months after Merck bought back the plant it sold just a few years earlier, company officials announced plans to sell off one product line and outsource others by the end of 2013 in an attempt to cut costs.

Merck’s 433 employees at the time were informed of the pending sale of its fermentation operations and decision to outsource the manufacturing of two products.

Merck Sharp & Dohme Co. reacquired the plant in September 2010 when the new owner, PRWT Services Inc., determined it could not meet the “challenging business environment in the pharmaceutical industry.”

Merck sold the Cherokee Plant to PRWT 2 1/2 years earlier.

The number of employees decreased to the current total of about 300 by 2013, according to newspaper archives. . . .


We will keep all these families in our morning meditations. Onward -- be excellent to one another. Out -- crossing my fingers for no rain today, as a picnic dinner -- and Beethoven's Fifth, is on tap, under the stars -- at Grant Park Music Festival / the CSO. Smile. . . .

नमस्ते

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