Pharmaceutical firm announces 325-job facility in Sanford (Raleigh, Star: salary, manufacturing)

[Tarheelhombre]

Abzena, a San Diego-based life sciences group, will open a new facility in the Central Carolina Enterprise Park, Gov. Roy Cooper and the Sanford Area Growth Alliance announced Tuesday.

It will be housed in the park’s second shell building which contains 117,000 square feet and will create 325 jobs offering an average annual salary of $60,000, a SAGA news release said.

“We are absolutely thrilled,” Jimmy Randolph, SAGA’s CEO, said Tuesday morning.

Recruitment of Abzena has been underway since fall, Randolph said, and had been dubbed Project Star until the business deal was sealed.

Abzena is a contract manufacturer that works with companies and academic groups all over the world, including most of the top 20 bio-pharmaceutical companies, the SAGA release said.

https://www.sanfordherald.com/busine...47fab375c.html

[Buxton Bagpipes]

Sanford is on roll:

"Sanford is a hot spot for biomanufacturing. Last year (2020), San Francisco-based gene-therapy company Audentes Therapies announced it would build a $109.4 million, 209-employee production center in the Lee County town, which is about 45 miles southwest of Raleigh. In 2019, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Pfizer said it would invest $500 million in a gene-therapy manufacturing plant in Sanford and add 300 jobs."