By TOM MARINER //
A familiar theme for success – and for staying on Long Island – is “family owned and operated.”
Look no further than Contract Pharmacal Corp., which employs more than 1,500 people across 750,000 combined square feet of Hauppauge-based spaces – and is well into its second generation of product development.
University of Pennsylvania chemistry graduate John Wolf and his wife, Harriet, began the pharmaceuticals- and nutraceuticals-manufacturing firm 51 years ago. The company has been steadily increasing production ever since, with more than 125 billion individual doses flowing out its doors.
Although those pills and powders – with some 100 new products developed annually – are manufactured here on Long Island for major pharma-industry players, you’d never know it: Contract Pharmacal’s logo is never seen on bottles in medicine cabinets.
Tom Mariner: Contract approved.
That’s all part of Wolf’s genius. The founder positioned the company as a supplier to, not a competitor of, Big Pharma.
Did it work? Consider a recent in-depth study by the Suffolk County Industrial Development Agency, which noted that Contract Pharmacal “flies beneath the radar,” despite constant growth in a massive sector.
That growth is no accident. Over the years, the firm has kept up with product and manufacturing innovations, updating its techniques and equipment with one eye on quality and the other on an ever-changing regulatory environment.
Contract Pharmacal has rolled with the punches many times: in the 1970s, when the company was brand-new and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rewrote the rules on over-the counter medications; in 1984, when the Waxman-Hatch Act created the modern U.S. generic-drug industry; in 1997, when the FDA got with the times.
Through it all, the Wolf kids were listening to Mom and Dad at the dinner table.
The first to join the firm was current company President Mark Wolf, who was fresh out of George Washington University. Two years later, current CEO Matt Wolf became a company intern; he’d officially join the family business five years later, after graduating from the University of Michigan.
Lab specimen: Founder John Wolf, developing chemical bonds.
John Wolf officially transferred ownership to the second generation in 2006, and finally retired in 2012.
This hints at nepotism, but not here. Among the lessons repeated around the dinner table was “hire and respect the best,” and that goes for the C suite, too – whether you’re a Wolf or not.
One important team member is Jeffrey Reingold, who earned an MBA at Stony Brook University and a PhD in chemistry from Brown University before becoming Contract Pharmacal chief operating officer in 2012. Reingold, also a valued member of the Long Island Bio Board of Directors, manages Contract Pharmacal’s vital quality and regulatory efforts, among other important duties.
Jeffrey Reingold: The quality doctor.
In addition to smart hiring, the current leadership generation has focused on evolving and expanding the company’s slate of services. Contract Pharmacal has always invested in the latest equipment (including an in-house analytical chemistry lab), largely to keep up with increased regulatory scrutiny; now the Long Island innovator is leveraging its long expertise in regulatory requirements and the complexities of bringing products to market.
The firm’s stellar growth – both in capacity and payroll – has long caught the eye of state and local industrial-development organizations, who have invested heavily in Contract Pharmacal’s promise of job growth. In return, the company has overdelivered on promised jobs, and is now preparing to occupy its 12th space inside the Long Island Innovation Park at Hauppauge.
Founder John periodically tours the empire, proud of what he started but also thrilled to see the next generation thrive. This family tree has blossomed marvelously – swinging and swaying to the changing winds of regulations and technology and global pandemics, always climbing higher, always rooted here on Long Island.
Tom Mariner is the executive director of Bayport-based Long Island Bio.
