Amgen Inc. (Nasdaq: AMGN) and Boehringer Ingelheim today announced they have signed an agreement under which Boehringer Ingelheim will acquire Amgen's rights in and substantially all assets at Amgen's Fremont California development and manufacturing facility.
The transaction has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is expected to close in March of this year. The Amgen Fremont facility currently employs approximately 360 employees and is a state-of-the-art, 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility with pilot plant and process development labs.
"With great enthusiasm, we look forward to welcoming the Amgen Fremont employees into the Boehringer Ingelheim family of companies," said Prof. Dr. Wolfram Carius, Boehringer Ingelheim Board of Managing Directors. "The technological expertise at Fremont and the state-of-the-art facility will enable us to further strengthen our global Contract Manufacturing Business including new biological entity process development and manufacturing efforts. We greatly value our relationship with Amgen and are enthusiastic about joining the San Francisco Bay Area biotechnology community and for the opportunity to better serve our current and future contract manufacturing customers."
Boehringer Ingelheim has been a contract manufacturer for Amgen for more than ten years.
"We are pleased to be able to build upon a successful contract manufacturing relationship with Boehringer Ingelheim," said Fabrizio Bonanni, Dr. Chem., Amgen executive vice president of Operations. "We look forward to continuing to work closely with them to support Amgen's delivery of safe and effective medicines to patients around the world."
Amgen obtained the Fremont facility through its 2006 acquisition of Abgenix. Amgen will continue to have a key presence in the San Francisco Bay Area biotechnology community through its South San Francisco facility, one of the company's key research centers.
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