
Township officials were among the invited guests to what turned out to be a “wall-breaking” Dec. 2 at Akorn Pharmaceuticals.
The event was billed as a “meet-and-greet” by Akorn to give officials an idea of the work that was about to begin in a $7 million project to refit a 15,000-square-foot Veronica Avenue building and two other spaces into laboratory and storage space.
Mayor Phil Kramer couldn’t resist the urge to use one of the ceremonial sledge hammers to puncture one of the walls slated to come down.
That led to a handful of Akorn employees doing the same thing.
Gary Eck, senior project engineer for the renovation, said work will begin as soon as all permits are secured.

Akorn is a niche generic pharmaceutical manufacturer and has research and manufacturing sites in the U.S., India and Switzerland.
“We continually have projects that will increase production and efficiencies,” Eck said. “This project is to give us a little more room for labs and storage.”
The company now has a 50,000-square-foot manufacturing plant on Veronica Avenue and plans to create another 6,000 square feet of manufacturing space there, Eck said. Akorn also has a 52,000-square-foot warehouse on Pierce Street, he said.