Drugmaker to shut Hauppauge plant, shift work to Yaphank site

A drugmaker that employs more than 800 people on Long Island is moving ahead with plans to close its Hauppauge factory but will retain a much larger factory in Yaphank, a spokesman said.

Amneal Pharmaceuticals Inc. expects to close the 100,000-square-foot facility at 75 Adams Ave. in Hauppauge in March. That’s more than two years after the previously scheduled shutdown date in October-December 2020, according to a notice filed last month with the state Department of Labor.

Anthony DiMeo, a spokesman for the New Jersey-based maker of generic and name-brand prescription drugs, said, “It’s taken longer than we thought [to close the Hauppauge plant] and that’s due to the carefulness in which a pharma company in the U.S. would shift production.”

The Hauppauge factory produces “oral solid” medicines and had 220 employees in 2019 but only 89 today, records show.

DiMeo said manufacturing of the products is moving to Amneal’s 477,000-square-factory and warehouse in Yaphank. He also said the affected workers have been offered jobs there, “and most of them have accepted that offer.” 

Amneal announced plans in the summer of 2019 to close the Hauppauge site as part of a strategy to cut $50 million in expenses per year.

At the time, the public company was expecting to post a loss for 2019, which ended up totaling $603.6 million. It subsequently reported a profit of $68.6 million in 2020 and $20.2 million last year. Sales totaled $2.1 billion last year, according to securities filings.

Asked about the future of Amneal’s Yaphank factory and warehouse, DiMeo said, “A lot of [product] development, manufacturing and distribution are done out [of that site] by some really smart folks.” Also, company co-founder and co-CEO Chintu Patel is based there.

Besides its Long Island operation, Amneal has more than a dozen manufacturing sites with about half in the United States and half in India. The workforce totals 7,000 people with 2,300 in the United States, the filings show.

In August, Patel and his brother Chirag Patel, also CEO, endorsed the establishment of a Congressional caucus to promote domestic  drug production.

“The pandemic and Ukraine war have highlighted the vital importance of a sustainable supply chain in the pharmaceutical industry,” they said. “We fully support the prioritization of essential medicines to be made in America.”