Pfizer cutting 40% of Premarin plant workforce
pharmafile | May 22, 2012 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Â
Pfizer has said it plans to cut 40% of jobs at a manufacturing facility in Manitoba, Canada, that supplies the active ingredient for its Premarin hormone replacement therapy (HRT) brand.
The downsizing will take place between now and 2013 and trim back the once 130-strong workforce to just 80 staff, according to local news reports. The fate of the plant in Brandon has been under a shadow since 2009, when Pfizer bought former owner Wyeth in a $68 billion takeover deal.
Premarin (conjugated oestrogens) once reigned supreme as Wyeth’s top-selling product and while HRT as a whole has seen its popularity diminish in the wake of a string of safety issues, since the 1990s the brand still has a dominant share of the North American market.
Sales of the Premarin range saw sales rise 11% to $261 billion in the first quarter of 2012 – pretty good for a 70-year-old brand – and the product is the number one pharmaceutical export from Canada, according to Pfizer.
The product has a complex manufacturing process that involves isolating oestrogenic compounds from the urine of pregnant horses, and this has helped protect it from generic competition. Brandon manages the collection of pregnant mare urine (PMU), the oestrogen extraction process, as well as the quality control and distribution of conjugated oestrogens.
Pfizer has said the staffing reductions will not affect the network of ranches in Manitoba and neighbouring Saskatchewan that supply the raw material used in the product.
The company is still facing lawsuits brought by women who claim to have been harmed through exposure to Premarin and related product Prempro, in the wake of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) postmenopausal hormone therapy trials – which found an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, blood clots and certain forms of cancer after long-term exposure to the drugs.
The WHI study continues to generate data as the thousands of women in the study are followed up over time. Last week, Pfizer said a new review of the data had found that oestrogen-only therapy with Premarin poses no increased risk of breast cancer for postmenopausal women who have had a hysterectomy.
Phil Taylor
