Emergent BioSolutions Closes Two Maryland Facilities, Cuts 300 Jobs. Now What? 

By Chris Frew | May 3, 2024

BioBuzz has been building life science communities for 14 years because we believe in the power of personal networks to unlock your career potential. For our next chapter, we’re building upon the success of our community to help solve today’s greatest challenges in hiring and career development. There is a better, more equitable way to connect talent with opportunity… and we’re building it.

Emergent BioSolutions, a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Maryland, has announced a major restructuring plan that will significantly impact its operations in the State. The company will reduce its workforce by approximately 300 employees across all areas, with a significant portion of those cuts expected to come from its Maryland facilities.

This is another huge blow to the State’s biomanufacturing workforce which has suffered from significant job losses over the past 18 months.  These aren’t just high paying research jobs being impacted, they are jobs held by employees at all levels of education from HS degrees to PhD’s.  These are the jobs that Maryland can’t afford to lose.

So, now what?

In 2023 BioBuzz hosted a job fair for those employees impacted by the last round of Emergent layoffs. While we are not able to do that again this year, we welcome anyone impacted to create an account on the BioBuzz Talent Lab – a talent marketplace hiring platform for biotech – to get matched with other opportunities locally and remotely.

Company’s Rationale

According to Emergent’s CEO, Joseph Papa, the restructuring plan is aimed at positioning the company for long-term success and stability. The company expects to save around $80 million in annual costs once the overhaul is fully implemented. However, the restructuring will result in a financial hit of around $18 million to $21 million in the second half of 2024.

CEO Joe Papa commented on the layoffs: “Today’s actions are about the future of Emergent. We have put in place a multi-year plan to position Emergent for sustainable and long-term success, and that starts by stabilizing our operations, strengthening our balance sheet and managing our debt.”

Facility Closures in Maryland

As part of the restructuring, Emergent will close its Baltimore-Bayview drug substance manufacturing facility and its Rockville drug product facility. This move will result in the loss of many biomanufacturing and production jobs for the State.

Emergent earned international recognition for their Bayview advanced development and manufacturing facility, and now it will sit empty. 

For those who don’t know the story behind the Bayview facility, it has played a significant role in Maryland’s life sciences ecosystem for over 27 years and first opened its doors in 1996 on the Johns Hopkins’ Bayview Research Campus.

The site was originally owned and developed by the Maryland Bioprocessing Center, Inc. (which later became MdBio). The goal was to both enhance Maryland’s bioscience infrastructure and generate revenue that could then be used to fuel the state’s burgeoning bioscience industry.  

What will happen to the facility now?  While the industry in Maryland has matured significantly since 1996, what plans are in place to help this critical industry recover these invaluable job losses and facility closures? 

Impact on Maryland’s Job Market

The layoffs and facility closures will have a significant impact on Maryland’s job market, particularly in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors. The state has been working to attract and retain businesses in these industries, and the loss of jobs at Emergent BioSolutions is another setback for the local economy which has seen several other layoffs this year.

In 2023 Maryland saw 1,222 layoffs in Biotech according to the State of Maryland’s Work Adjustment and Retraining Notifications registry. Now in 2024, Maryland’s biotech industry has been hit with approximately 550 additional jobs lost due to layoffs. This includes:

  • Novavax 239
  • Inovent 36
  • NextCure 30
  • Adaptive Phage Therapeutics 19
  • Exact Sciences 58
  • Charles River Laboratories 14
  • Emergent Biosolutions 150 (approximate)

We have reached out to the Emergent to learn the exact number and will update the article once confirmed.

It’s important to recognize that these aren’t just biotech jobs that are being impacted in Maryland. According to a PhRMA report, ”For every one biopharmaceutical industry job, the industry supports an additional 3.92 jobs in the U.S. economy, for a total employment multiplier of. 4.92.”  

That calculates to 2,706 jobs impacted by these layoffs.

Now what? 

We don’t have that answer, but we do want to help and we know that we have a strong community here in Maryland that will support those impacted. 

The positive side of this story is that for companies that are looking for a place to expand or grow, Maryland now has a very attractive value proposition. Now only do you have move-in-ready facilities but a top notch biotech workforce ready for you to hire.

Learn more about why Maryland is the right place for your to grow your company: https://business.maryland.gov/industries/life-sciences

For those impacted by these job losses, here are some resources to help out.

Events:

Resources:

Time to upskill & reskill:

If there is anything else that you feel BioBuzz can do for the community please feel free to contact me personally at [email protected]

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