Pasadena’s Jacobs Engineering Group Wins $350 Million Contract to Build Pfizer Biotech Center in China

Jacobs Engineering Group, a Pasadena-based company that is one of the world’s largest engineering businesses, recently won a bid to provide design and construction support for Pfizer’s new Global Biotechnology Center in China, worth $350 million.

Pfizer is a major international pharmaceutical company.

Jacobs will be responsible for the site’s overall design, which includes drug substance and central utility buildings, a laboratory, a warehouse and an aseptic fill and finish, according to the terms of the contract.

The company, a fortune 500 firm founded over 50 years ago that employs over 60,000 people in 230 offices worldwide, used to be 100 percent headquartered in Pasadena when it started out, but branched out after growing, keeping many of its positions in Pasadena.

Recently, 111 of those jobs left in Pasadena and are moving over to Dallas, Texas, according to an agenda posted online by the Dallas City Council.

According to the agenda, Jacobs has been in discussions with officials in Dallas regarding moving its headquarters there for the several months. Dallas is currently trying to woo the company over with a grant worth $277,500.

In an email statement made to the LA Times, Mendi Head, a spokesperson for Jacobs, said the company “is considering plans to move a portion of its corporate functions from its Pasadena location to Dallas later this year, pending a successful real estate process and final approvals for state and local economic development investments.”

Head confirmed that Jacobs will keep some employees at the Pasadena office.

Joe Vranich, the owner of Spectrum Location Solutions, is a consultant for companies who want to move across state lines, released a study in January of this year showing that over 1,600 had left California since 2007, many of them going to Texas, a state that has no state income tax.