AMPAC Fine Chemicals set to bring 110 jobs to the community

PETERSBURG — The long idle Boehringer Ingelheim chemical plant in Petersburg is finally back up and running. U.S. company AMPAC Fine Chemicals held a grand reopening for the plant, which is set to bring 110 jobs to the community.

AMPAC is a pharmaceutical company which manufactures active ingredients for a number of medications. Its active ingredients are purchased by drug manufacturers for medications used for treating cancer, HIV, Central Nervous System disorders, Hepatitis C, influenza and more.

German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim closed the plant at the end of 2014. AMPAC purchased it from UniTao Pharmaceuticals LLC in 2016 and began preparing its buildings for production. The City Assessor’s office lists the sale price at $8.6 million for the nearly 200-acre property.

“It’s just a beautiful plant. It’s been built by a pharmaceutical company, not by a chemical company,” said AMPAC CEO Dr. Aslam Malik. “It’s by far the prettiest plant that we have in all our plants.”

AMPAC owns two other chemical factories, one in Rancho Cordova, California and the other in La Porte, Texas. The largest of the three is the California plant, but the Petersburg location is two to three times larger than the Texas plant.

The total property value is listed at $19 million by the City Assessor.

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Malik was familiar with the old B-I plant, having interacted with the company earlier in his career. He said the Petersburg plant has a specialty in a progress called hydrogenation.

“That’s where we invested quite a bit of money out there in the plant to make sure that it was brought up to scale and done in a proper way,” Malik said.

Additionally, the plant has a history of making DEA controlled substances which AMPAC saw as an opportunity.

Other improvements since the purchase in 2016 were meeting industry FDA benchmarks and staying ahead of the curve.

“When we got that facility, it was an excellent facility that was built by Behringer Ingelheim. However, it had been idle for a few years so we had to make sure that everything they do is working,” Malik said. “… It changes all of the time. At AMPAC we are always trying to stay slightly ahead of that so we don’t get caught out by surprise.”

Currently at 53 employees, AMPAC is looking to ramp up to 110, hiring positions from custodial staff to chemical scientists and engineers. Malik said that the area’s workforce was already a perfect fit for AMPAC’s operations.

“Keep in mind when BH was operating at full tilt, they ended up hiring a whole bunch of people from the local area,” he said. “That to me is a very, very important part of my decision to come to Petersburg, because it can take years, decades to train people with the right mentality in terms of safety and quality to make pharmaceutical ingredients. Out there in Petersburg I have a reservoir of people.”

AMPAC was purchased by South Korean holding company SK Holdings in July 2018. It was announced as the largest merger and acquisition transaction in the Korean pharmaceutical industry at the time.

Malik said SK Holdings hopes to expand and bring even more development to Petersburg, now having a foothold in the area.

SK broke ground on a $1.67 Billion batter plant in Georgia this March.

“My goal is to start attracting a lot more toward the Petersburg area,” Malik said. “We have almost 200 acres out there. With that much land I would love to have them do more.”

AMPAC donated a Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus recharging device to Petersburg Fire and EMS. It allows firefighters to fill their tanks at the scene of a fire, rather than having to go back to the station and refill air tanks when they empty.

“We definitely wanted to be part of the community,” Malik said. “And the community showed us that they want us to be out there. I can’t tell you how much that means to us. The mayor declared June 17 as AMPAC day, and believe me that news has gone all the way back to our headquarters in Korea. It really opens up that was very very touching and we really feel honored from what was done from Sam.”

Mayor Samuel Parham said that attracting AMPAC to Petersburg is a massive win, showing the city’s ability to attract jobs and businesses to the area.

“All of them were talking about what a joy it is to be in Petersburg,” Parham said. And to silence some of our critics, saying you all don’t bring any jobs to the city, well here it is, here’s 110 jobs for the city. We managed to pull it off despite going through a tremendous financial crisis that really had crippled the city for a long time.”

Parham first met with AMPAC in 2016, along with Councilman Howard Meyers.

“It’s huge for Petersburg at a time when we’ve gone through a financial crisis and we’ve had to adjust to turning the page with them and coming out of a rough time,” Parham said. “It takes time to get projects of this magnitude. For us doing this coming out of a financial crisis, and be able to show the value to the people at AMPAC of the jewel that’s at the southern end of Petersburg, there’s unlimited possibility there, over 200 plus acres, and it’s a huge win for the citizens of Petersburg.”

Sean Jones can be reached at sjones@progress-index.com or 804-722-5172.