By Tom Walsh – FREEP.COM
A huge, twice-abandoned General Motors complex in Flint will soon be home to a fast-growing pharmaceutical company that vows to create more than 1,000 jobs there in five years — and as many as 4,000 jobs by 2028.
Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy, a family-owned firm near Swartz Creek, about 10 miles west of Flint, is expected to receive approval today for about $75 million in state tax credits and workforce training funds to relocate its headquarters and launch a big expansion on the site of a former Fisher Body plant.
“We’re flipping our model around, and we’re going to put every job we can in Genesee County, Michigan,” instead of scattering sites around the nation, as is common in the drug industry, said Phil Hagerman, Diplomat’s president and co-founder.
If Diplomat grows as fast as Hagerman predicts, transformation of the Flint site for nonautomotive use would rival the conversion now under way of Ford’s Wixom assembly plant into a renewable-energy park for grid-power storage and solar panels.
Tenfold jobs gain: Why not?
“It’s pretty bold,” Phil Hagerman told me, “for a company that has 400 employees today to say that we’re going to hire 1,000 in five years and 4,000 in 18 years, but the reality is, we’re in an industry where the tide is rising at 15% to 20% a year.”
Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy of Swartz Creek, founded 35 years ago by Hagerman and his father, is growing sales at a 50% annual clip by focusing on the delivery of high-cost drugs and follow-up care to people with complex medical conditions such as multiple sclerosis, severe rheumatoid arthritis and various cancers.
“While that sounds like a pie-in-the-sky number,” Hagerman said of the 4,000 new jobs by 2028, “we were able to convince the state that it’s really not a leap, and it’s very doable, and we’re the guys that are going to do it.”
In return for that job-creation promise, the Michigan Economic Growth Authority is expected today to approve an extensive 18-year package of tax and workforce training incentives for Diplomat. The company plans to invest $12 million to relocate its headquarters and expand operations in a deserted automotive complex in Flint.
There’s room to grow.
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