An Illinois-based pharmaceutical company with long-standing operations in North Carolina plans to add 200 jobs at its medicine manufacturing plant in Rocky Mount, about 60 miles east of Raleigh.
 
Hospira will add the jobs over the next three years in technical, supervisory, production and support roles. The jobs will pay an average annual wage of $51,780, about 50 percent more than the Nash County average, according to an announcement issued today by the office of Gov. Bev Perdue.

The company currently employs 2,400 at the Rocky Mount facility that was built in 1968 by Abbott Laboratories and spun off to Hospira in 2004.

Hospira stands to qualify for $645,000 from the One North Carolina Fund if it meets state targets, including investing $85 million in the facility in the first three years. The company can also qualify for up to $12.5 million in property tax refunds from Nash County and City of Rocky Mount as part of a local economic development agreement.

Hospira, based in the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, employs 15,000 worldwide and makes infusion technologies and generic injectible drugs for hospitals and health care facilities. The Rocky Mount plants makes anesthetics, anti-infectants and medications for kidney and heart care.

Hospira doesn't plan to resume production of a key lethal injection drug, which had been made at its massive manufacturing plant in Rocky Mount, after running into opposition from Italian authorities about making the drug in that country.

Halting production of sodium thiopental could disrupt executions in states already struggling with a shortage of the drug.

Hospira wanted to shift production of the drug from Rocky Mount to a plant in Italy that has "state-of-the-art production lines," said spokesman Dan Rosenberg. But Italian authorities insisted the company control the product's distribution to guarantee it wouldn't be used in executions, the Associated Press reports.

After discussions with Italian authorities, with Hospira wholesalers and within the corporation, Hospira decided it couldn't make that promise.

Federal regulators found problems during recent inspections of Hospira's massive drug and medical device factories in Clayton and Rocky Mount.

The company has recalled two injectable products made in Clayton because of an equipment failure at the facility contaminated an anesthetic agent called Propofol and an intravenous nutritional product called Liposyn, Bloomberg News reported. The products are sold to hospitals and physicians.

The company received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration dated April 12 outlining "deficiencies related to particulate in certain emulsion products" at the Clayton facility, Hospira reported in a regulatory filing today. The letter also discusses problems with manufacturing validation processes and quality control procedures.

The FDA letter does not restrict production or shipment of products made at the two plants, but Hospira is holding shipment of certain products pending its own investigation and discussions with the FDA, the company reported in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"We are continuing to manufacture products at these plants," said Hospira spokesman Dan Rosenberg. "We take very seriously these comments from the FDA. We're in the process of implementing the necessary improvements and we'll work closely with the agency to ensure we meet all its expectations as soon as possible."