Animal vaccine maker Pacific GeneTech has announced plans to locate its U.S. headquarters in northwest Arkansas and bring a biotechnology manufacturing center to the region.
The new facility will expand space for laboratory vaccine development, enable better collaboration and support the company’s growth initiatives, PGT said in a news release. The facility is expected to open in late 2022. Other details including the specific location and cost of the project were not immediately disclosed.
The company was founded in Arkansas in 2009 by Executive Chairman Louis Bowen, a University of Arkansas graduate, and former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker. It has brought a cross-protective vaccine to market that enhances immune response to multiple diseases and has vaccines for avian salmonella, avian flu, swine flu and other pathogens in its development pipeline.
Tim Collard, CEO of Pacific GeneTech, said its vaccines provide an alternative to antibiotics and can replace multiple vaccines with one vaccine through drinking water or a spray. That reduces labor in large poultry operations where thousands of birds are grown. By reducing pathogens in the animal, he said, it improves feed-conversion ratios and minimizes chances of exposing consumers to the pathogens.
Currently, PGT has one U.S. office located in Louisburg, Kansas. It also has offices in Hong Kong and Canada. The company is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, according to its website.
The company’s plans in Arkansas were announced a little more than a week after PGT named Edward Fryar, the founder and former CEO of Ozark Mountain Poultry of Rogers, to its board of directors. Fryar was previously a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Arkansas, where his research included grain and poultry marketing and price risk management. He serves on the University of Arkansas System’s board of trustees and has been a member of the Council of Economic Advisors for the Governors of Arkansas since 1983.
“Ed brings to PGT decades of successful management, entrepreneurship and expertise in the poultry industry and his many years of academic research for the agriculture industry,” Bowen said in the release. “He will also be very helpful to PGT as we build out our US presence in Northwest Arkansas.”
Fryar, who sold Ozark Mountain Poultry to George’s Inc. of Springdale in 2018, has also served on the Agribusiness Council for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and on the board of directors of the National Chicken Council.
“Both my private industry experience and academic research made clear that innovation is vital to successful advancement in the ever-evolving food production market,” Fryar said in the release. “The next-generation vaccines pioneered by Pacific GeneTech provide chicken farmers with a crucial tool to raise healthy animals without antibiotics and to strengthen the integrity of our food supply.”
Fryar joins another Arkansas poultry expert at PGT. University of Arkansas professor Dr. Billy Hargis is one of the company’s scientific advisers. Hargis is the director of the John Kirkpatrick Skeeles Poultry Health Laboratory and holds the Tyson Endowed Chair for Sustainable Poultry Health.
Proximity to research institutions including the U of A played a part in PGT’s decision to bring its U.S. headquarters to the region, the release says. The company also based its decision on the ability to attract qualified technical management and employees, and “strong support by the state.”
The company also has three human vaccines in development, including vaccines for malaria and salmonella. All are in the research or preclinical phase.
A previous version of this story misstated the number of human vaccines Pacific GeneTech has in development.
Sign up for Daily E-news
