Teva is downsizing and shedding some of its manufacturing facilities here in Israel, including two of its manufacturing facilities in Jerusalem. One of these facilities is a state of the art, fully certified FDA &CE,GMP facility at the Har Hotzevim industrial park which was opened up about 9 years ago in Jerusalem for the production of generic pharma preparation. The building is composed of four distinct elements – production, warehouse, laboratory and office wing and utilities. A main vertical circulation and services core interconnects them. It is one of the largest facility for potent drugs in Israel, as a one batch production and also included a new lab for potent materials.
Could this be an OPPORTUNITY for Israel and its pharma industry to REPURPOSE the facility into a pharma CDMO (Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization)? Israel has quite a number of pharma start-ups and the ability to have such a CDMO could provide significant infrastructure for these companies by providing them the production facilities of their pharma development both for the clinical trials and for the early marketing stages. To set up a dedicated production line requires considerable expenses and time for getting the ecological and regulatory approvals for the local and international markets. Teva has invested over $ 110 million in their Jerusalem facility and by selling it to an international CDMO company or local investors, they could recoup part of this investment. Furthermore, if Teva new strategy will be more into innovative pharma instead of generic pharma, having a CDMO facility would contribute to their business.
The government of Israel and the City of Jerusalem would probably be very willing to large subsidies to have this happen, both in the infrastructure and in retraining the manpower.
