L'Oreal Building Draws Two Bids

According to a published report, Aurobindo Pharma Ltd., a Hyderabad, India-based company that focuses on R&D for a number of pharmaceutical ingredient products, is one of the two bidders for the building and its 21-acre site on Route 1. The company, which operates largely in Asia, has links to the US through affiliated companies based in Pomona, CA and Lexington, KY.

The other bidder is reported to be Lee Kum Kee USA Foods, a California-based division of a Hong Kong-based food products company. While the three companies involved will not comment on the process, local officials in this Middlesex County township confirm that L'Oreal has in fact received the two bids for its property.

The asking price for the building has not been announced and the companies involved are mum on the relevant numbers in their bids. Industry observers, however, estimate that the building, which was opened in the late 1980s, will bring L'Oreal somewhere in the range of $7.5 million to $10 million.

The shutdown represents a slight cutback of L'Oreal's operations in the Garden State, with the local assembly operation slated to be outsourced. A total of about 120 full- and part-time jobs are involved in the closure, although company officials say that about one-quarter to one-third of those employees, all full-time positions, will be relocated to the company's other Garden State locations in Somerset, Edison, Piscataway and Clark.

A sale of the building would give local officials one less headache. The announcement of L'Oreal's closure followed quickly on the heels of Johnson & Johnson's announcement that it would close its 500-employee manufacturing plant just up the highway. The fate of J&J's building has not yet been determined.