BOULDER — Swiss drugmaker Roche plans to sell its Boulder facility as part of a sweeping companywide reorganization plan to save the firm more than $2.4 billion annually.
The Roche Colorado site — a facility with a more than 60-year local history — employs 275 people and specializes in the manufacturing of peptides.
John Tayer, a Roche Colorado spokesman, said officials do not expect a sale to have a negative impact on the workforce at 2075 55th St.
“We have been through similar transactions in the past,” he said. “We’ve gone through similar name changes and come out on the other side an even stronger company.
“We would have every expectation that would be the case in this situation.”
Officials are targeting an early 2011 time frame for a sales agreement to be reached, Tayer said.
The Roche Colorado site sale is just one part of Roche’s “Operational Excellence Program,” a plan centered on “adapting cost structures to an increasingly challenging marketing environment,” officials announced Wednesday. The plan involves:
• Cutting 4,800 jobs — about 6 percent of the worldwide workforce — during the next two years.
• Transferring 800 jobs internally and 700 positions to third parties; discontinuing RNA-interface research; moving facilities.
• Selling its Boulder and South Carolina sites.
Those moves and others are expected to save the company more than $1.8 billion in 2011 and $2.4 billion annually starting in 2012.
