BEDFORD, Ohio -- Cancer drug-maker Ben Venue Laboratories Inc. will stop production at its facilities by the end of the year, according to a press release issued by company officials today.

The move means 1,100 employees at Bedford's largest employer -- which accounts for about 22 percent of the city's revenues -- will lose their jobs, through a phased reduction that will begin this month and continue into 2014. Employees are being notified in a series of employee meetings, said Boehringer Ingelheim Corp. U.S. spokeswoman Marjorie Moeling. Boehringer Ingelheim, based in Germany, has owned Ben Venue since 1997.

"Despite the ongoing support of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the tremendous dedication of employees, and significant investments in facility upgrades, the company cannot return to sustainable production," the release stated. "Although interim controls implemented to assure product quality have been effective to date, in the long term, they are not sustainable."

The company said it has notified the FDA of its decision to close.

Company officials also called Bedford Mayor Dan Pocek with the news.

"It's a sad day for the city and for the employees at Ben Venue," Pocek told The Plain Dealer. "It's like receiving sad news about a member of the family."

Over the years Ben Venue has been a "good corporate citizen," Pocek said, adding, "I know they've been trying to work through things, they've always been forthright with us."

Pocek said he anticipates that he and other city officials will meet face-to-face with Ben Venue leaders soon. Until then, he said, "We're trying to grasp everything at this point."

The amount of investment that Ben Venue needed to address its manufacturing challenges is not viable, stated the release, alluding to the age and condition of some of its facilities and other factors.

In January, the company said it had invested more than $300 million in upgrades.

"Ben Venue projects, in addition to the more than $350 million invested to date, significant additional cumulative operating losses of approximately $700 million over the next five years," the release stated. "Ben Venue understands the importance of the drugs the company produces, and will work to help ensure that these critical medicines continue to reach the patients who need them."

For more than a decade, the company was the sole U.S. manufacturer of Doxil, an injectable chemotherapy drug to treat advanced or recurring ovarian cancer, until it ran into serious production problems in 2011. In November of that year, the company voluntarily shut down production at its facility on Northfield Road after complaints were made about metal particles found in one of its products.

A year later Johnson & Johnson sought approval from the FDA for Ben Venue, its contract manufacturer, to be allowed to resume production of Doxil, one of the cancer drugs that had been in short supply. In January of this year, the company entered into a consent decree with the FDA, allowing them to resume making Doxil and other critical cancer drugs in short supply.

The consent decree allowed Ben Venue to manufacture and distribute more than 100 drugs.

Ben Venue had announced in June that it planned to trim its workforce down to 800 employees. At that time, the company had 1,250 employees.

In September, Bloomberg reported that Johnson & Johnson sued Boehringer Ingelheim over whether a dispute about an agreement to produce Doxil must be submitted to arbitration. Lawyers for Johnson & Johnson said that Boehringer executives in the U.S. violated a 2009 agreement to make Doxil, which left Johnson & Johnson unable to keep up with demand, according to a court filing in Delaware.

According to BusinessWeek, the lawsuit stated that Ben Venue planned to stop production of Doxil by the end of the year, even though it owes Johnson & Johnson 67 batches of the medicine.

Founded in 1938, Ben Venue relocated from Carnegie Avenue in Cleveland to Northfield Road in Bedford in 1941, according to the company's web site. During the 1980s, expansion doubled the company's size.

The company in 1994 established its Bedford Laboratories division, which would become one of the largest suppliers of injectable drugs.