Pharmaceutical company Simtra has bought a 65-acre property from Cook Group, including a 300,000 square-foot facility, to expand its Bloomington operations, potentially to manufacture cancer drugs.
The company bought the property at 301 N. Curry, which is on Bloomington’s northwest side. The site is east of Profile Parkway and the Ivy Tech and Cook Medical campuses. Cook, a local medical device maker, had bought the former General Electric property in 2017 for $6.5 million.
Rhonda Luniak, director of communications for Simtra BioPharma Solutions, said via email that the companies were not disclosing financial specifics about the deal at this time. Local property records show the Curry Pike property most recently had an assessed value of $10.7 million.
Simtra primarily operates high-tech machines that fill syringes with medications to treat chronic conditions such as diabetes and life-threatening illnesses such as cancer.
“The addition of this site provides Simtra significant flexibility to rapidly expand its manufacturing footprint in the United States to respond to growing capacity demands from both new and existing customers,” the company said in a news release.
Luniak said the site “has the potential to support additional high-quality jobs” but could not provide any immediate details. The company said in the release it is “evaluating a project to design and install manufacturing lines at the site, including the Company’s first U.S.-based commercial-scale capacity for oncology-focused injectable drug products.”
Nearly 2 million new cancer cases are reported in the U.S. annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the agency expects cancer rates to stabilize in women and decrease in men, the number of cancer cases is projected to increase by 49% through 2050 because of of the growth and aging of the population.
Jen Pearl, president of the Bloomington Economic Development Corp., said the news about Simtra’s land purchase was “wonderful” in part because it portends a redevelopment of the former GE site.
“As we’ve seen with the old RCA/Thompson Consumer Electronics site (now Novo Nordisk) and Otis Elevator site (now home to PHOENIX and Almvoy American, Inc.), public-private investments in sites like these can continue to bear fruit for the community,” she said via email.
Pearl said Simtra has a strong record of adding jobs and paying above-average wages, and she said the purchase “positions Simtra for further investment and jobs growth, in a growing industry, at a time of shifting economies.”
She said the BEDC “is currently working with Simtra and Monroe County on planned investments in the site. “
Luniak said it was too early to talk about how much the company would invest in the site.
“We’re currently working with Monroe County on developing a phased plan for the site that will allow us to scale thoughtfully and align with customer needs over time,” she said.
Simtra BioPharma Solutions formerly was Baxter International’s BioPharma Solutions business. Baxter sold the unit in October 2023 for $4.25 billion to investment firms Advent International and Warburg Pincus.
Simtra said last year that it planned to spend $225 million to expand its Bloomington campus with a new manufacturing plant and 130 employees. The company said the employees would earn, on average, just under $35 per hour, or around $73,000 a year. That expansion is “underway” the company said Friday.
At the time, the company said it planned to spend about $80 million to build a 140,000 square-foot facility next to existing plants on its main Bloomington campus, at 927 S. Curry Pike. The company also has two warehouses on Curry Pike and a 120,000-square-foot inspection/packaging/labeling facility on Daniels Way, just south of the Cook headquarters. Simtra also planned to spend another $145 million on equipment. That project was expected to be completed toward the end of 2026.
As of Friday, the company had 30 full-time job openings listed on its website for Bloomington, including for engineers, maintenance technicians and in manufacturing.
Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Pharma firm buys 65-acre Bloomington property from Cook Group
Reporting by Boris Ladwig, The Herald-Times / The Herald-Times
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