Workers have a meeting near the expansion project at the Patheon building in Bend on Tuesday. (Andy Tullis/Bulletin photo)

A $5.5 million upgrade at Patheon in Bend is expected to be completed by September, before the North Carolina-based pharmaceutical services company is absorbed by scientific supplies giant Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Patheon announced June 29 that the work underway in Bend is part of a $45 million investment at key sites around the globe. Patheon is adding capability at a plant in Florence, South Carolina, to complement the work done in Bend, which specializes in helping drug companies find formulations that will be more readily absorbed by the human body. The company is also investing in facilities in Monza, Italy, and Greenville, North Carolina.

“It’s a message to clients we’re increasing our capacity, and the company is growing,” Patheon spokeswoman Mari Mansfield said.

The work at Patheon’s Bend plant on NE 18th Street has been planned since 2015, after the company acquired Agere Pharmaceuticals, founded by former employees of Bend Research.

Patheon is expanding into excess space with a new analytical lab, development-scale spray drying and manufacturing suite, Mansfield said. The spray drying process is also a signature capability at Bend Research, whose parent company Capsugel was acquired by Lonza of Basel, Switzerland, on July 6.

Patheon’s $5.5 million investment includes new equipment, Mansfield said. General contractor CS Construction obtained a building permit March 30 from the city of Bend for an addition to the building, construction valued at $268,300, and a second permit May 8 for $1.3 million.

The plant is in an enterprise zone, which means the company is eligible for tax abatement on investments in new equipment and building improvements. Patheon in late 2015 received a two-year extension on its existing three-year tax break and agreed to hire 22 people. At the time of the agreement with the city of Bend, Patheon had 52 local employees. The company now has 79 employees in Bend, Mansfield said.

Bend is a small part of Patheon’s footprint, and it will be an even smaller part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, which has $18 billion in annual revenue and 55,000 employees.

Thermo Fisher, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a main player in scientific lab supplies. By acquiring Patheon, the company will gain entry to contract development and manufacturing for pharmaceuticals, a $40 billion market, according to Thermo Fisher’s May 15 announcement. The $7.2 billion deal is expected to be completed by the end of the year, Thermo Fisher said.

Patheon, which had 2016 revenue of approximately $1.9 billion, will become part of Thermo Fisher’s Laboratory Products and Services segment.

Thermo Fisher said in a corporate presentation it’s looking to strengthen its position in two areas: development and manufacturing of biologics, which are large, complex molecules manufactured in a living system; and clinical trials.

Patheon’s Bend facility works with small-molecule drugs, made through chemical synthesis, and specializes in a process called spray-dried dispersion, which enhances the solubility of molecules not readily absorbed by the body. Bend works with clients in the development stage, while the company’s Florence, South Carolina, site will house a commercial-scale spray-dried dispersion suite that’s expected to be ready in 2019, according to Patheon.

— Reporter: 541-617-7860, kmclaughlin@bendbulletin.com