Drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. is pulling up stakes entirely in Connecticut by the end of 2018 and expanding elsewhere.
The Wallingford research site will close by the end of 2018 as planned but the Connecticut development site that was to be built here is no longer on the drawing boards, the company said in its announcement.
BMS had previously indicated it would keep hundreds of jobs in the state even though it planned to shutter the research facility two years from now.
Just last week, the company settled for $19.5 million with Connecticut and more than three dozen other states over the alleged mismarketing of its antipsychotic drug Abilify.
In its announcement Tuesday, the company said it would “make investments” in new construction in Lawrenceville and New Brunswick, N.J.; and continue to expand its Devens, Mass., biologics campus. It is also expanding in Cambridge and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Besides closing up shop in Connecticut, the firm will phase in closure of its Hopewell, N.J., site by mid-2020 and not renew its lease at a plant in Seattle, Wash., in 2019.
“These important changes to our U.S. geographic footprint will ensure we have the structural, operational and financial flexibility to deliver as effectively as possible on our mission for patients,” said CEO Giovanni Caforio.
Jobs from the shuttered facilities may transition to other locations across the company’s U.S. footprint, the firm said.
A company spokesman said BMS has 700 employees in Wallingford.
