Genzyme takes steps to get back on track after plant delay (GENZ)
Genzyme Corp. (Nasdaq: GENZ) shares are at session highs and have seen their most active trade of the day in the past 20 minutes as of about noon Eastern after the company said it’s making progress toward restoring production at its Allston Landing manufacturing facility.
At an conference yesterday, the company said the entire Allston Landing plant had to be shut down and sanitized to remove a viral contaminant. At the time, the company said the plant would be back up and running by the end of July, although management expected a 6-to 8-week sales hiccup for Cerezyme, an enzyme deficiency treatment that makes up about a quarter of the company’s revenue.
Genzyme said this morning that it has begun shipping product from finished lots of Cerezyme held in inventory, after testing detected no evidence of a virus.
“We are confident that the Allston plant will be back online later next month, that we will be able to minimize the impact of constrained supply, and that the measures we are implementing will prevent this issue from occurring again,” the company said in a statement. — Mike Tarsala
