PORTAGE (WKZO-AM) — They may not play as big a role in the community’s life as the Upjohn Company used to, but Pfizer is still a major local player when it comes to contributing to the local economy.
They have closed their downtown labs and spun off their animal health care division, which is now called Zoetis, but they still operate the huge manufacturing complex in Portage, across the street from what used to be Upjohn World Headquarters.
The firm has just released a study done by the Upjohn Institute of Employment Research that shows they contributed $2.2-billion to the metro economy in 2015, $414-million in salaries to workers.
They employ about 22-hundred at the Portage facility and create thousands of other spin-off jobs with the money the company and their employees spend in the community.
They produce 150 different products at the 4-million square foot plant.
Just this summer, they broke ground on $144-million in new construction, which means those numbers will only be higher in the years to come.
The expansion also provided some reassurance that the world’s largest pharmaceutical firm has no immediate plans to pull up stakes and leave, which has been an ongoing and underlying concern for local officials.
