By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Perrigo Company has gotten plenty creative in its quest to attract highly skilled pharmaceutical workers to fill approximately 40 positions at its Allegan plant, and many of the workers its talking with are former Pfizer employees from all over West Michigan.
On February 4, Perrigo held an open house in Terre Haute, Indiana to meet with Pfizer employees there who are interested in an opportunity to come to West Michigan after Pfizer informed them that the Terre Haute plant is closing.
"We heard that many of those workers had been transplanted from the Holland and Kalamazoo Pfizer facilities and our hope was to offer them the opportunity to return to West Michigan," says Kim Shriver, Perrigo spokesperson. "We had about 50 attendees and about 60 percent of them had Michigan ties."
Perrigo's Denise Curtis adds that many workers relocated to Terre Haute, purchased a house, and now were without jobs a second, and even a third, time.
Perrigo has an additional 110 non-pharmaceutical jobs to fill due to the company's fast-paced growth driven by new product offerings and the acquisition of Galpharm, a pharmaceutical company in the U.K.
For example, the launch of omeprazole, a store brand equivalent of Prilosec OTC, will generate some $200 million in revenue this year alone. And Perrigo logged first quarter earnings of $383 million, up $43 million from last year.
"Often we have to go to the east and west coasts to find skilled pharmaceutical individuals, and it’s a hard sell because they don't know anything about West Michigan," says Shriver. "This was an opportunity to get the skilled individuals we need who already know West Michigan's attributes and want to be here."
Source: Kim Shriver, Denise Curtis and Sharon Hayward, Perrigo; Randy Boileau, Boileau Communications Management LLC
Photo - Perrigo production facility
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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