WINSTON-Pilot Therapeutics will get more than $6 million in grants and loans on top of a $10 million incentives package announced earlier to relocate to Charleston, SC.
The additional money was disclosed in a new regulatory filing on the precise terms of South Carolina’s winning bid. Previously, Pilot had only disclosed the value of its tax credits, not the grants.
A company spokesman could not be reached for comment.
In October, Pilot said it would move its operations and 15 employees from Winston-Salem to Charleston and build a manufacturing facility in Orangeburg, SC. In five years, the company expects to employ 180 people in the state.
North Carolina tried to put together a counteroffer that would have been valued at more than $8 million, but it fell apart, and in the end amounted to only about $2.5 million.
In the SC filing, Pilot said its wholly owned subsidiary, Pilot AgBio, collected $1.5 million in “economic development grants to be used for working capital purposes and investment in” the manufacturing facility. It is also set to collect $1.5 million in a working capital, 6-year term bank loan.
Furthermore, Pilot AgBio will get more than $2 million in another working capital loan that would be converted to a grant if the company meets “certain capital investment and employment milestones within the next two years.”
Finally, Pilot will receive $500,000 as an “incentive from the developer for the signing of the lease” on the manufacturing plant, plus a $500,000 grant for relocation costs.
Pilot was one of the first firms at Winston-Salem’s Piedmont Triad Research Park. Its technology is based on research from Floyd “Ski” Chilton at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Pilot is developing “medical food” products, led by an over-the-counter asthma treatment that to be launched in January. Called Airozin, the product is to come in individually wrapped, gel-filled packages that asthma sufferers squirt into their mouths.
Pilot Therapeutics: www.pilott.com
