Pharmaceutical companies in Chicago: AbbVie, Abbott and the 53 plants around them

This report is for anyone sizing up drugmakers around Chicago: candidates comparing employers, suppliers qualifying a new account, and sales teams planning a territory that runs from Waukegan to Northwest Indiana. It uses the Census metro definition, which includes four Northwest Indiana counties, and checks the listed companies in their own filings.

Three ways to count Chicago's drug industry

None of the three is "the number of pharmaceutical companies". CBP counts locations, not firms, and leaves out the self-employed; FDA counts registrations, including medical gas and packaging sites; EDGAR counts only listed companies.

The Census figures

County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 3254 (Pharmaceutical and Medicine Manufacturing), Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN Metro Area (CBSA 16980):

The Census Bureau doesn't publish the 1,000 or more cell for the metro; the 1 is the total less the published classes. The metro is unusually top-heavy: 27 establishments have fewer than 20 employees, 13 have 20 to 99, and 13 have 100 or more, including six with 500 or more.

The Census Bureau published DuPage's employee total but flagged it as high-noise: the noise it adds to protect confidentiality changed the figure by 5% or more. By six-digit code, 29 of the 53 establishments make finished dose pharmaceuticals (325412, 4,189 employees), 11 make medicinal chemicals and botanicals, 7 make biologics and 6 make in-vitro diagnostic substances.

What NAICS 3254 leaves out matters here. The same 2023 data shows 197 drug wholesale establishments in the metro (NAICS 424210) with 20,236 employees, and 80 biotechnology R&D establishments (NAICS 541714) with 1,579. Head offices are counted as managing offices, outside any industry.

AbbVie, Abbott and the other listed companies

Checked against each company's latest 10-K:

Abbott's SEC code is pharmaceutical preparations, but most of its sales come from devices, diagnostics and nutrition. AbbVie's 10-K lists North Chicago and Abbott Park among its significant manufacturing sites, and both as US research sites. Bright Minds Biosciences, a Canadian issuer that files on Form 40-F, gives a Chicago address as its US corporate headquarters. We left out five names in the EDGAR match that aren't drugmakers based here: a cannabis operator, a public acquisition vehicle with no clinical operations (Enzon, renamed Viskase Holdings), a diagnostics startup, a company whose 10-K now gives Redwood City, California, and one based in Frankfurt.

Registered sites in FDA's file

FDA's Drug Establishments Current Registration Site (DECRS) lists sites that manufacture, prepare, propagate, compound or process drugs for the US market. In the Chicago metro:

Chicago itself has 13 registrations, then Vernon Hills, Elk Grove Village (5 each), Waukegan, Libertyville, Alsip and Romeoville (4 each). Registrants include AbbVie (North Chicago), Baxter Healthcare and Baxalta (Round Lake), Fresenius Kabi USA (Melrose Park), Pfanstiehl (Waukegan), Medline Industries (Waukegan), Fareva Morton Grove, Kashiv BioSciences (Chicago), Woodstock Sterile Solutions and Phibro Animal Health (Chicago Heights). A registration is the company's own filing, not an approval.

Checking a Chicago-area drug company

• Licences. Illinois's Department of Financial and Professional Regulation licenses wholesale drug distributors (with a separate controlled substance class), wholesale drug third-party logistics providers and virtual wholesale distributors under the Wholesale Drug Distribution Licensing Act (225 ILCS 120). For the Indiana side of the metro, check the Indiana Board of Pharmacy.
• Inspections. FDA's Data Dashboard shows inspection results, warning letters and recalls by firm.
• Who is who. iBIO, the state's life sciences association, and World Business Chicago, the city's economic development agency, are the places to meet companies and track expansions.

For job seekers, the size table is the useful part: with 13 sites of 100 or more people, most of the metro's 7,315 manufacturing jobs sit at a short list of employers, and the 10-K headcounts above show which ones are large.

Prospecting the market

Worked example: a light industrial staffing firm

Illustrative example. The firm and its rates are invented; the counts come from CBP 2023 and FDA's registration file.

Prairie Line Staffing (prairieline.example) places packaging and machine operators and wants regulated manufacturing clients.

1. Build the list. Take the 83 manufacturing registrations, less the 14 gas suppliers, plus the 30 pack and label sites: 99 sites.
2. Keep the right size. CBP shows 26 of the metro's 53 establishments (49%) have 20 or more employees; applied to 99 sites, that's about 49 targets.
3. Do the arithmetic. Reaching the operations or HR manager at half of them gives 25 conversations; if 4 sign a supply agreement and each fills 6 roles a year at $9,000 margin a role, that's $216,000 a year.

Finding the person who owns hiring at each plant is the slow part; Bebop researches each account in a list and suggests who to contact.

Subject: Packaging operators for [site or town]

Hi [first name],

I saw [company] is hiring [role] at the [town] site.

Plants in regulated packaging often tell us the hard part isn't finding people, it's finding people who already work to GMP documentation.

We place operators who have worked on FDA-registered lines in the Chicago area. Would it help to see three profiles this week?

[Your name]
[Phone number]

For the drugmakers behind these sites at global scale, see the largest pharmaceutical companies.

Next step: see the state next door in the Indiana pharmaceutical market report.