Chemical plant reopens in Petersburg

The long idle Boehringer Ingelheim chemical plant in Petersburg is finally back up and running. U.S. company AMPAC Fine Chemicals held a grand reopening for the plant, which is set to bring 110 jobs to the community. AMPAC is a pharmaceutical company which manufactures active ingredients for a number of medications. Its active ingredients are purchased by drug manufacturers for medications used for treating cancer, HIV, Central Nervous System disorders, Hepatitis C, influenza and more.
German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim closed the plant at the end of 2014. AMPAC purchased it from UniTao Pharmaceuticals LLC in 2016 and began preparing its buildings for production. The City Assessor’s office lists the sale price at $8.6 million for the nearly 200-acre property. “It’s just a beautiful plant. It’s been built by a pharmaceutical company, not by a chemical company,” said AMPAC CEO Dr. Aslam Malik. “It’s by far the prettiest plant that we have in all our plants.” AMPAC owns two other chemical factories, one in Rancho Cordova, California and the other in La Porte, Texas. The largest of the three is the California plant, but the Petersburg location is two to three times larger than the Texas plant.