Grifols creating 300 new jobs in Clayton after receiving incentive package
Spanish biotechnology company Grifols, which has a large presence in the Triangle, is creating 300 new jobs in Clayton after receiving an incentive package from North Carolina and Johnston County.
The jobs will be created between 2024 and 2028, and the company will receive $5.2 million in incentives from the state for creating the jobs. The incentives were approved Tuesday morning by the state’s Economic Investment Committee, which met through a phone conference.
Grifols, which focuses heavily on plasma-based therapies, has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into its facilities in Clayton, about 20 miles southeast of Raleigh in Johnston County. The Barcelona-headquartered company is now the largest private employer in Johnston County, employing more than a thousand people there, The News & Observer previously reported.
Johnston County will also give Grifols incentives worth up to $19.3 million, according to the state’s Commerce Department. The new jobs will have an average salary of $69,032, which is higher than the current average wage in Johnston County of $40,734.
The biotech company has had a presence in the Triangle since 2010, when it bought Research Triangle Park-based Talecris for more than $3 billion. The company maintains an office with around 300 employees in RTP.
The state Commerce Department said that San Marcos, Texas, was also competing for the new jobs. Grifols also has a large presence in Texas, with plasma testing laboratories in both Austin and San Marco, and around 2,000 employees across the state. Texas was apparently offering Grifols around $55 million in incentives and other tax exemptions, according to Commerce.
Grifols declined to comment on the expansion beyond a statement from Doug Burns, president of Grifols, saying, “We are extremely proud to expand our manufacturing operations in the state of North Carolina ... our new state-of-the-art fractionation facility will help meet the growing demand for plasma-derived medicines in the United States and around the world.”
Commerce Secretary Anthony Copeland said in an interview that he has always viewed Grifols as a critical employer in North Carolina — especially because of its work on critical diseases.
Grifols has created therapies to treat a number of diseases, including hepatitis A, hemophilia and Alzheimer’s.
At the moment, the company is trying to develop coronavirus therapies using plasma from patients who have recovered from COVID-19. The company has also used its Clayton facility to develop treatments for diseases like ebola.
“The conversations have never stopped with Grifols. I have always continued to talk with them about the next expansion,” Copeland said in an interview, noting he has a long relationship with executives at the company.
“But [conversations] really moved rapidly during the outbreak of the coronavirus,” Copeland added. He said the company was especially interested in watching how the state handled its response to COVID-19. “The governor has been personally involved and meeting with executives.”
“I was confident with our discussions with them and the governor,” Copeland said, “that they have a lot of confidence in North Carolina going forward. They know our workforce is second to none, and they have, in particular, had conversations with me and the governor about how North Carolina is a safe place to do business.”
The company has continued to invest heavily in its Clayton facilities in recent years, and will open a new plant there in the next year. When that is open the Clayton facility will be the world’s largest plasma fractionation site, according to David Bell, Grifols’ chief innovation officer.
The company says it is investing more than $350 million in the project.
The fractionation process separates different proteins from the plasma. Once they are separated, the proteins can be purified and sterilized for future use as components of medicines that help rejuvenate or replace missing proteins in other patients’ plasma.
“Companies like Grifols continue to choose expansion in North Carolina because our workforce can meet their needs of this important facility,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement. “During this public health crisis, we have seen the value of manufacturing close to home and this expansion means new, life-saving medicines will be manufactured in Clayton.”
North Carolina has doled out many incentive grants in recent years to land manufacturing projects from biotechnology and life sciences companies. These projects have been mainly clustered around the Triangle’s Research Triangle Park.
Last week, for example, the biotech startup GRAIL, which makes blood tests for cancer, said it would add 400 jobs in Durham after receiving incentives from the state.
In the past year, companies like Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Merck have all announced manufacturing expansions in the Triangle after receiving incentives from the state — and several smaller biotechnology companies have as well.
“We are going to continue [to pitch] the 60-mile radius around the urban areas like the Triangle, the Mecklenburg region and the Piedmont Triad region,” Copeland said of the state’s recruitment efforts. “They have the airport infrastructure and the highways and there is a magnet of skilled workforce pulling from the universities.”
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate
This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 11:48 AM with the headline "Grifols creating 300 new jobs in Clayton after receiving incentive package."
