The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
State gives biotech $1 million to help with relocation
ViiV Healthcare is spending $4.1 million to facilitate move
A $1 million grant from the state is helping a joint venture pharmaceutical company relocate from Wallingford to Branford.
The grant for ViiV Healthcare was one of the expenditures approved by the Connecticut Bond Commission at its meeting Friday. The company moved into its new facility on East Industrial Road in Branford late last year, according to Dan Doyle, a spokesman for state Sen. Ted Kennedy Jr., who helped obtain the grant money.
ViiV Healthcare is a joint venture of pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline.
ViiV Healthcare invested $4.1 million of its own money to pay for the new Branford location. The company develops drugs for the treatment of HIV.
Doyle said the state grant money will allow ViiV Healthcare to retain 25 jobs and add 45 more workers over the next five years. The company has roughly 100 people working in Branford, according to the GlaxoSmithKline website.
Kennedy said one of Connecticut’s “greatest economic strengths is the cutting-edge companies like ViiV Healthcare that populate Branford’s bioscience corridor.”
“This company provides good-paying jobs to Connecticut residents and attracts some of the brightest minds in the country to our community,” he said in a statement. “I will continue to work with companies like ViiV Healthcare to identify opportunities for Connecticut to become a better state for bioscience businesses to grow and thrive.”
Mark Cockett, vice president and head of discovery at ViiV Healthcare, said the Branford facility is the company’s first wholly owned research laboratory in the state.
“Innovation requires scientists who push the boundaries and infrastructure to support them, and Branford’s bioscience corridor provides us with the opportunity to do just that,” Cockett said.