After Alcami’s rapid growth in Wilmington in the past few years, the company plans on leveraging its established position in the city and add more business opportunities in its development, manufacturing and packaging services for pharmaceuticals, said senior director of marketing and corporate communication Catherine Hanley.

Despite having a total of seven operating facilities and three commercial offices globally, Wilmington still makes up a large portion of the company with three separate facilities off North 23rd Street to carry out the company’s work.  

“The site contributes approximately up to 40 percent of the total company’s revenue, “said Hanley.

According to Hanley, Alcami has about 1,000 employees, 400 of them in Wilmington.

Speaking in front of locals and company workers during an open house and tour of the facilities June 14, Jason Spacek, senior director and head of the business unit at Alcami, outlined some of the new programs Alcami has developed to maintain its position in Wilmington and other facilities.

For example, Alcami started a project last year to examine turnaround times for its sample testing and biology work, Spacek said.

“We were able to reset the bar for all of our turnaround times back in the end of May. We announced it, and we started doing that this month,” he said.

The company’s timeline for chemistry work was brought down from 10 days to seven days. Its timeline for microbiology methods was brought down from 15 days to 12 days.

Another new development for Alcami is its Extended Workbench Program, which, according to a June 13 press release, is a service program customized to a client’s specific project. This new program doesn’t require long-term commitments and provides a dedicated team of employees and project managers for clients.

So far, reaction to this program has been favorable, according to Spacek.

“We’ve seen some of the feedback we’ve had from the customers and it is really good from a collaboration perspective to get this level of project planning, support and be able to react quickly with what they need us to do with the dedicated resources,” he said.

The company also developed Alcami OnDemand to allow clients to get faster information on their projects and see what stage it is in the development and manufacturing process. Spacek said this new form of communication eliminates confusing voicemail and emails.

In March, Alcami sold its Learning Center location on 1206 N. 23rd St. Hanley said the company decided to get rid of that location because its focus and knowledge is not in childcare. The space was sold to a husband and wife team who now runs it to serve Alcami employees and other families.

The company plans on hiring more employees in Wilmington.

“We are positioned for significant growth in the next year both commercially and operationally. We recently launched a new careers page on our website and are looking for talent in many of our departments,” Hanley said.

Alcami announced in July last year that the company was transitioning its global headquarters to Durham from Wilmington, abandoning plans for a major expansion in the Port City. But Syed Husain, chief commercial officer at Alcami, said Wilmington and Durham are good homes for Alcami.

“We are excited to be in the state of North Carolina and we are looking to continue to leverage what we have already here,” he said.