Calbiochem Being Sold to Swiss Firm
Hoechst Celanese Corp. said Friday that it is selling its Calbiochem unit in Torrey Pines to Biodor Holding AG, a privately held Swiss concern, placing in some doubt the jobs of 200 Calbiochem employees.
An employee contacted by telephone said that Biodor representatives visited the plant Friday but gave no assurances to employees that they would keep their jobs. A spokesman at Hoechst Celanese’s headquarters in Bridgewater, N.J., said he didn’t know what Biodor’s plans were regarding Calbiochem’s 200 employees.
Terms of the sale, which is set to close in about two months, were not announced. Calbiochem makes specialty biochemicals used in research and scientific experiments.
The announcement of the sale follows Hoechst Celanese’s decision last April to move its Behring Diagnostics unit to New Jersey from Torrey Pines, a move that resulted in about 180 employees being laid off. Hoechst then said it was making the move after Behring’s “consistent losses” over a 10-year period.
Both Calbiochem and Behring were successor companies to Calbiochem Corp., which Hoechst acquired in 1977. Both companies occupied space in the Calbiochem facility on Torrey Pines. The Hoechst Celanese spokesman said Friday that he didn’t know whether the Calbiochem property, a 16.1-acre site estimated by one real estate broker recently to be worth more than $20 million, was included in the sale or not.
Biodor will make the Calbiochem operation the North American headquarters for its Biodor Group unit. The Biodor Group operation will be moved next year from Torrey Pines to another site in the San Diego area, the spokesman said.
