Coastal Xethanol has now taken over the facility in Georgia, USA, and will produce ethanol biofuels on the premises.
The ex-Pfizer site has millions of dollars in equipment and infrastructure in place and ready to use for ethanol production, however, equipment that is not relevant in the production of ethanol will now be sold by the site's new owners.
A public auction will be held between January 23 and 26, onsite in Georgia as well as on the website of the San Francisco-based firm overseeing the asset sale, Rabin Worldwide.
The site was previously used by Pfizer to make active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and included an 89,100 sq. ft. manufacturing facility with a reactor capacity of 29,000 gallons; a 25,000 sq. ft. warehouse facility; a 7,300 sq. ft. laboratory space; and 16,000 sq. ft. of offices and conference rooms.
In the final five years of production, Pfizer spent around $85.7m (€67m) in capital improvements at the Augusta facility - much of which was never utilised, according to Rabin Worldwide.
This was seemingly a waste of money that Pfizer can ill afford at a time when pharma firms across the globe are tightening their belts to cope with spiralling drug research and development costs.
A Pfizer spokesperson was unavailable to comment prior to publishing.