Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) management announced today that the Teva Assia plant in Petah Tikva will shut down. Of the 140 employees, 100 will be laid off while the remaining 40 will be transferred to other Teva plants.
Teva Assia is engaged in R&D for generic pharmaceuticals and is in a separate building from the company's headquarters. Teva Assia has no production capabilities. Most of the company's employees have chemistry and biology degrees.
Closing the Teva Assia plant will result in a major reduction of the company's generic R&D, which could be translated into a decline in the company's ability to develop innovative generic products.
Teva operates in Israel throughout the country with plants from Kiryat Shmona in the north to Ramat Hovav near Beersheva in the south. Teva Assia's laboratories in Petah Tikva cover 11,000 square meters.
The cuts are part of a streamlining plan announced by Teva earlier this month to shed 14,000 jobs worldwide including 1,750 employees in Israel as the company is crippled by a huge debt of $34.7 billion.
Since the cuts were announced, there have been stormy protests and strikes by Teva's employees around the country and outside the homes of senior executives. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Teva's new CEO Kare Schultz and asked him to reduce the number of layoffs in Israel but to no avail.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 27, 2017
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