Pharma company Upsher-Smith to close Plymouth facility, lay off at least 58 workers

Longtime Minnesota-based generic drugmaker Upsher-Smith Laboratories, which was sold to a Taiwanese firm in 2024, is closing one of its two drug plants in the state and refocusing work here on the contract drug-manufacturing business.

The company, which was the subject of a billionaire family’s five-year legal feud, is laying off at least 58 employees at its plant on 23rd Avenue North in Plymouth, according to a federal WARN Act notice filed with the state Thursday.

Some employees at Upsher-Smith’s Maple Grove facility on Evenstad Drive also will be laid off, although the plant will stay open.

The decision is part of Taiwan-based Bora Pharmaceuticals' “strategic realignment to optimize global operations and better serve our customers,” an Upsher-Smith spokesperson said in an email.

“This transition ensures the continued supply of high-quality products to our customers while enhancing operational efficiency,” the spokesperson said.

Pharmacist and chemist Frederick Alfred Upsher-Smith founded the pharmaceutical company in 1919, working in a Minneapolis laboratory to help people with cardiac disease, a company website says.

Ken Evenstad bought Upsher-Smith in 1969, and his family owned the company for nearly half a century. The Minnesota Star Tribune previously reported that Evenstad turned around the business, redirecting it toward the then-new field of generic medications.

The Evenstad family became one of Minnesota’s richest, but a feud spilled into the public eye in the 2010s as a legal battle over the family’s estate ensued. The family sold Upsher-Smith to the Japanese company Sawai Pharmaceutical in 2017, and it was sold again to Bora last year.

Bora paid $210 million for the company, much less than the 2017 price tag of $1.05 billion, the Minnesota Star Tribune previously reported.

In 2023, Upsher-Smith began consolidating manufacturing into a Maple Grove facility that its website calls “one of the largest and newest U.S. generics plants in years.”

Now, Bora will transfer products produced at the Plymouth facility to other “state-of-the-art” facilities it owns, the spokesperson said.

The first layoffs at the Plymouth plant are expected on April 4 and will continue in waves through July 31, the company said in a letter to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development and the mayors of Maple Grove and Plymouth.

The employees include operators, supervisors and technicians, and are not represented by a union, the letter said. Some of the workers in Plymouth will be moved to Maple Grove, it said.

The layoffs in Maple Grove may be permanent unless the company starts doing business for external customers at the plant, the letter said.

“Our recently expanded Maple Grove, Minnesota facility will remain operational, continuing to provide Contract Development and Manufacturing services,” the spokesperson said.

“The Maple Grove site will also offer space for customers to produce their own products, reinforcing Bora’s commitment to fostering innovation and collaboration within the pharmaceutical industry.”