Genentech will invest $125M to expand Hillsboro facility; InDinero will hire 50 and establish Portland as its “primary office.”
BY JACOB PALMER | DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Two companies from California are following the national trend and are moving to Oregon.
Biotech giant Genentech will spend $125 million to expand its Hillsboro facility. InDinero, a tech startup, is moving to Portland and intends on making the city its “primary office.”
Genentech opened its suburban Portland facility in 2010 and has grown from 250 to 415 employees. The company said it will hire 100 skilled workers for the factory over the next five years, OregonLive.com reports.
Oregon officials aggressively recruited Genentech in the mid-2000s, hoping it could form the core of a biotech sector as Intel has done for computer hardware. The company said it was won over by Oregon tax structure and several additional incentives, including a 15-year, $23 million property tax exemption.
The expansion announced Thursday might also benefit from Oregon’s enterprise zone program, but Sanders said those incentives hadn’t been finalized.
Larry Sanders, Genentech’s general manager and vice president of the company’s Hillsboro Technical Operations, told the Portland Business Journal: “We like doing business in Oregon,” in a story published by the Portland Business Journal.
The Hillsboro plant puts bulk drug substances into their final dosage form and packages and distributes them. The new jobs will encompass factory workers, technicians, engineers and quality control and logistics specialists, Sanders said. Genentech’s areas of focus include oncology, immunology, tissue growth, neuroscience and infectious disease.
“Doing biotech in Oregon is an excellent fit,” Sanders said. “It’s a nice match for a clean, sustainable manufacturing industry. I’m a big fan and the corporation is voting in that direction.”
Meanwhile, InDinero, a startup that assists small businesses with their accounting services, said it will move its “primary office” to Portland.
It will hire 50 people, OregonLive.com reports.
The six-year-old company plans to staff the full range of corporate jobs in Portland, which may someday be its headquarters. It currently has 100 employees spread across four cities, including seven in a Portland office that opened this month at S.W. Seventh Avenue and Washington Street. InDinero plans to hire at least two-dozen by the end of the year.
“I wanted to be in a place where I could be, potentially, one of the top startups,” said chief executive Jessica Mah.
