Five years ago, RenaMed Biologics Inc., a biotechnology company started in 1995 to commercialize kidney therapies developed at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, set up a manufacturing facility in Lincoln, aiming to connect with New England’s biotech community.
The new location allowed RenaMed to tap into a large pool of skilled workers in and around the Boston area, said Richard A. Andrews, chief business officer, and the 23,000-square-foot space was “a great pilot manufacturing facility.”
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
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But RenaMed has kept growing – from three employees in 2002, to about 75 this year. And last September, the company made a breakthrough, forging an agreement with Genzyme Corp. in Cambridge to manufacture its therapy for acute renal failure on a larger scale.
RenaMed needed a new space, but Rhode Island had nothing suitable to offer, Andrews said, and building something new was not feasible in the company’s time frame.
So last week, RenaMed announced that it’s moving its operations out of state, to a 113,000-square-foot facility in Westborough, Mass., later this summer. It will be the second Rhode Island biotechnology firm to relocate to Massachusetts in the last nine months.
Spherics, which makes oral pharmaceutical products, announced in August that it received $2.5 million from the MassDevelopment Emerging Technology Fund to move to a 29,500-square-foot facility in Mansfield.
Andrews said RenaMed’s current plant is “really first-rate space for an early-stage startup,” but RenaMed “is at a stage in its growth where it needs a first-class and large-scale commercial manufacturing space.”
Operations at the Lincoln facility will continue into 2007, he said. RenaMed has also kept its presence in Ann Arbor, where it has a research facility.
Saul Kaplan, deputy director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, said the state isn’t prepared to meet the needs of companies such as RenaMed. “We do not have an inventory of [existing] space that is ready to accommodate biotechnology manufacturers that they can move into,” he said, adding that companies can’t afford to wait two years to plan and build a new facility.
Andrews said that companies in the biotechnology industry – not unlike other sectors – do not like to make commitments until they have to, and when a decision is made, the firm wants to move quickly.
“[Companies] like seeing the facility and the infrastructure available, and when it is there, you can move it and get it operational,” he said.
Kaplan said there are potential locations in Quonset, Tiverton, the Providence area and northern Rhode Island to build biotech manufacturing plants, but the challenge is to get ahead of the demand and create suitable spaces in the time frame companies are looking for.
To this end, the EDC is trying to increase the portfolio of early-stage companies through entities such as the Slater Technology Fund, so that the development community would be more inclined to build a facility in the state, said Kaplan.
To help develop more companies, the EDC is pushing a piece of legislation this session that would create a tax credit for entrepreneurs, management teams and investors of high-tech businesses to provide an incentive to build the company and stay in Rhode Island.
Still, Kaplan noted that the state boasts leading research institutions such as Brown University and the University of Rhode Island, a biotech leader in Amgen, and is one of the finalists for a Bristol-Myers plant.
Charles T. Francis, president of CB Richard Ellis/New England’s Providence office, said companies want to stay in the state, but there are places readily available in Massachusetts that Rhode Island cannot provide.
Biotech companies usually need brand-new buildings to move into, unless there is a vacant building that housed a biotech company previously, Francis said. That’s the disadvantage the Ocean State faces.
