A global company is shutting the doors on 15 Island jobs by the end of the year.
In an announcement to shareholders last week, Elanco Animal Health celebrated $12 million in future savings – to be achieved by cutting jobs and selling assets, some of which are on P.E.I.
The research and development facility for Elanco Animal Health is located in Victoria by the Sea and employs the affected staff year-round in the small tourist-driven community.
The P.E.I. cuts are part of Elanco’s plans to eliminate close to 250 jobs in several locations around the world.
In addition to Victoria, certain operations at the company’s Wusi, China site will be eliminated, and operations at their Speke, England location will be “streamlined”.
Elanco’s Charlottetown operations will remain unaffected, said spokesperson Colleen Parr Dekker from the company’s head office in Greenfield, Indiana.
“The manufacturing site continues to do very well there,” said Parr Dekker. “As the Charlottetown site continues to grow, there may be opportunity for impacted employees to pursue positions there.”
Elanco has scaled up operations in Elanco’s Charlottetown manufacturing facility in recent years, adding staff and over $30 million in capital investment.
Quality control operations related to manufacturing will continue at the Victoria, location until a buyer for the facility is found.
Parr Dekker could not specify how much money closing the Victoria location will save the company, but Elanco is planning $12 million in savings for 2020.
The labs in Victoria generated ideas and technology in the company’s aqua-vaccine pipeline. Parr Dekker said the cuts will “optimize the R&D footprint” of the company.
Elanco, a division of Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY), acquired the two P.E.I. sites in a $5.4 billion deal with Novartis Animal Health in 2014 that included 15 manufacturing and research sites, 600 products and 3,000 employees worldwide.
In 2018, Elanco Animal Health went public (NYSE: ELAN). Since then, said the news release, it has continued to evaluate its capabilities, structure and staffing to meet its goal of being an agile, standalone company, focused exclusively on animal health and delivering on its Innovation, Portfolio and Productivity (IPP) strategy.
Parr Dekker could not specify the future of the aqua-vaccine pipeline once the Victoria research and development facility closes.
