As CDMOs across the industry continue to face pressure from a fluctuating biopharma business environment, AGC Biologics is charting another round of staff cuts and pumping the brakes at one of its chief U.S. facilities.
As part of the new restructuring push, AGC will lay off 68 employees at its cell and gene therapy plant in Longmont, Colorado, 17 employees at its commercial mammalian plant in Boulder, Colorado, and 10 employees in Bothell, Washington, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) alert.
The job cuts, which largely affect manufacturing workers, are set to go into effect Nov. 22, according to the notice.
AGC confirmed the move over email, pointing to the biopharma industry's spending cuts that have weighed heavily on CDMOs and other manufacturers.
“With that, AGC Biologics has evaluated our resources and made the difficult decision to idle most operations at one of our global sites, the AGC Biologics cell and gene therapy plant in Longmont and restructure some U.S. and global support functions,” a company spokesperson explained.
The decision does not mean the Longmont facility is being sold off, the spokesperson said. Instead, AGC is pausing most operations as it rethinks its strategy in the small Colorado town and keeps a “close eye on the nascent cell & gene therapy market.”
While most production functions are temporarily winding down, the Longmont warehouse, quality control labs and “some office space” will remain operational, the spokesperson added.
AGC established its presence in Longmont—some 16 miles from the company’s mammalian facility in Boulder—with the purchase of a Novartis Gene Therapies plant in the summer of 2021.
The 622,000-square-foot facility is the largest commercial cell and gene therapy manufacturing plant in AGC’s network and currently employs more than 150 people, according to the company’s website.
Jobs getting the chop in Longmont include manufacturing supervisors, managers and associates as well as workers in quality control, engineering and more, the WARN alert states.
AGC’s spokesperson said the company doesn’t make layoff decisions lightly and will support both employees and customers through the change. Staffers affected by the cuts will receive comprehensive severance packages, the spokesperson added.
The latest round of cuts follows AGC’s decision to lay off just under 4% of its global workforce back in May.
Citing “changing economies” and “other external factors” affecting AGC Biologics and many of its manufacturing partners, the CDMO's spokesperson told Fierce at the time that the company had reached an inflection point and needed to adjust business priorities and “right size and rebalance the resources of our organization.”