Swiss Company Acquires Vacaville Genentech Facility from Roche

The Vacaville Roche (Genentech) facility has been purchased by Lonza, a Swiss manufacturer of pharmaceutical, biotech and nutraceutical products. Lonza released a press release on March 20th announcing the acquisition.

Lonza agreed to purchase the plant for $1.2 billion and plans to invest over $500,000 to upgrade the facility and describes the acquisition as a strategic step toward the company’s plans for expansion. Lonza describes the Vacaville facility as one of the “Largest biologics manufacturing facilities in the world by volume” in their press release.

“The Vacaville site is a highly valuable strategic acquisition that will make capacity immediately available for our customers and unlock future growth for our Biologics division. It will support us in providing a commercialization path to existing customers and incremental large-scale commercial capacity to our partners.”

Jean-Christophe Hyvert, Lonza President of Biologics

The deal is still subject to various approvals and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024, according to Lonza.

I spoke with a current employee of Roche (Parent company of Genentech) who wished to remain anonymous. He stated on Wednesday, March 20th employees were summoned to meetings about the announcement and were told “most or all” employees of the facility will be able to remain in their current positions.

Genentech built the 427,000 square-foot Vacaville facility in 1998 before being acquired by Roche (another Swiss company) in 2009. The facility remains one of Vacaville’s largest employers and the cornerstone of a growing bio-science industry in Vacaville. Last year, Roche announced plans to sell the facility, which has approximately 800 employees.

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