Am­gen gets the dirt fly­ing on its new $550M man­u­fac­tur­ing site as phar­ma build­ing booms in NC

Am­gen’s big, $1 bil­lion in­vest­ment in its man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions is of­fi­cial­ly un­der­way, as the biotech broke ground on its Hol­ly Springs, NC site Mon­day. The $550 mil­lion drug sub­stance plant is one of two mas­sive up­grades in the US for the Cal­i­for­nia com­pa­ny, and it’s look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on the re­gion’s tal­ent­ed pool of po­ten­tial em­ploy­ees.

Wake Coun­ty and the Hol­ly Springs lo­cal gov­ern­ment award­ed Am­gen with job de­vel­op­ment grants worth $12.6 mil­lion and $22.8 mil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly, con­tin­gent up­on hir­ing mile­stones. Con­struc­tion is sched­uled to wrap up by 2029, though the plant will be op­er­a­tional in 2025. New hires will in­clude en­gi­neers, tech­ni­cians, qual­i­ty, man­age­ment and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff. The av­er­age salary of the new po­si­tions added is ex­pect­ed to reach near­ly $120,000, close to dou­ble what the cur­rent av­er­age is in Wake Coun­ty. An­oth­er 350 jobs are ex­pect­ed to be added, up­on the site’s com­ple­tion.

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