Area Development
Australia-based Mayne Pharma Group began construction on a $65 million, 126,000-square-foot, oral-dose commercial manufacturing facility adjacent to the company’s Sugg Parkway building in Indigreen Corporate Park, which will create more than 100 jobs in Pitt County, North Carolina.

While creating 110 new in Greenville and the capacity for hundreds more later, the expansion will more than double Mayne Pharma’s U.S. manufacturing capacity to support and accelerate organic growth. The facility will be realigned to significantly expand the contract analytical laboratory and formulation development services capacity.

“We Aussies know the value of a quid (dollar), and this is the right place indeed for the investment of our quid,” Roger Corbett, Board Chairman of the Australia-based Mayne Pharma Group, said.

Mayne Pharma in 2012 paid $120 million for Metrics Inc., a grassroots contract drug analytical laboratory founded in 1994 by East Carolina University graduate Phil Hodges and ECU professor John Bray. Mayne Pharma was founded in 1845 in Australia as F.H. Faulding for the delivery of oral dosage forms of drugs. Today, Mayne Pharma and its Metrics Contract Services staff solve drug delivery problems for their pharmaceutical company customers across the United States.

“The talent, education and ability of our team right here has brought us a lot of pharma business nationwide,” Corbett said. “That is an immense tribute to the work ethic found in this state.”

“This is the best of North Carolina and also the best of our relationships with other countries,” Governor Pat McCrory said of the Metrics-Mayne connection. “People like Phil and his investment team make our country great. If Phil did not have the vision and his investors the courage to put their hard-earned capital down on this, today would not have happened.”

The expansion means Mayne Pharma can introduce commercial-scale manufacturing capability for its modified drug delivery products, an offering the company provides at its Australia facility. The company has seven modified-release products in the pipeline targeting markets with sales greater than $3.5 billion; three have been filed with the FDA. All U.S. distribution will be consolidated to Mayne Pharma’s Greenville campus, company officials said.

The expansion is made possible in part by a performance-based grant of $550,000 from the One North Carolina Fund, which provides financial assistance, through local governments, to attract business projects that will stimulate economic activity and create new jobs within the state.