The tax-increment financing bonds will be used to pave the way for Elanco Animal Health Inc. to build its new headquarters on the former General Motors stamping plant property west of downtown.
The deal would boost Greenfield-based Elanco’s profile in the billion-dollar pet dermatology market and continue its acquisition strategy.
It was the best quarter yet for Elanco since its spinoff from former parent Eli Lilly and Co. in 2018.
The maker of animal feeds and vaccines also is closing research and development sites in Germany and New Zealand, and making smaller cuts elsewhere. Altogether, Elanco is chopping 350 jobs in 23 countries.
Officials said remediation efforts are in their final stages, with final certification expected in the next few weeks. Elanco Animal Health Inc. plans to build a $100 million headquarters on the site.
The state’s pitch to keep Elanco Animal Health Inc. in Indiana for the long term began with a dinner at the Governor’s Residence two years ago.
Elanco Animal Health Inc.’s announcement Friday that it will move its headquarters to Indianapolis came as a surprise to many business leaders in Greenfield. While disappointed, they say they are hopeful the move won’t be a significant blow to the city’s economy.
Beyond the public company’s $100 million headquarters campus, city and state leaders expect 26 acres to be used for an expansion of White River State Park and new projects potentially with residential, retail and office uses.
The total doesn’t include the value of the land the state will give to Elanco Animal Health for the project. Even so, the combined city and state package is possibly the largest amount of tax breaks ever considered for an economic development deal in Indiana.
CEO Jeff Simmons said the company’s high-profile downtown Indianapolis headquarters will signal a cultural transformation at the company, which for most of its six decades of existence operated as a little-noticed subsidiary of Eli Lilly and Co.
The state has offered at least $86 million in tax incentives, plus land for the project.
Podcast host Mason King talks with Margie Craft, a senior adviser at Elanco Animal Health who is leading Food Secure Indy, a coalition of companies, public officials and not-for-profit groups that want to coordinate hunger-relief efforts.
The layoff is the first step in what is expected to be a major restructuring following Greenfield-based Elanco’s $6.9 billion acquisition of German conglomerate Bayer AG’s animal-health division.
So far, Elanco has been a textbook case for the benefits of spinoffs—for both the parent company divesting the business and the division gaining its independence.
Now that the company has closed its $6.9 billion acquisition of the German conglomerate’s animal-health division, it must now swiftly and carefully integrate the two sprawling companies in the midst of a pandemic.
Shares in Elanco rose 2.8% Wednesday morning after the approval was announced, to $24.13 each.
The Greenfield-based company, which spun off from Eli Lilly and Co. in 2018, said it expects the deal to close in early August.
The land formerly was owned by Eli Lilly and Co. and then was included in Elanco’s 2018 spin-off from the pharmaceutical company.
The deal, which is expected to close by mid-2020, will swell Elanco from the world’s fourth-largest animal health player to the second-largest, behind only New Jersey-based Zoetis.
The company is eliminating 250 jobs as part of a restructuring that’s expected to result in at least $12 million in savings in 2020.
