SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. — One of the area’s largest employers could get new ownership — again.

Shire PLC is considering a takeover bid by Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. worth about $64 billion after rejecting four previous offers.

Shire has a pharmaceutical plant in Stanton Springs where it is working toward U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for immunoglobulin therapy, and later for albumin therapy.

The company hopes to hire 100 new employees this year and another 100 next year.

Gov. Nathan Deal first announced the plant in 2012 when Baxter planned operations as the first tenant in Stanton Springs. Baxter later spun off the operations to a new company, Baxalta, which Shire later purchased in a multibillion-dollar deal.

Shire is twice the size of Takeda, Reuters reported.

As part of the incentives package to land what is now Shire, the state built the Georgia Bioscience Training Center. Facebook announced last month it too will build at Stanton Springs with a massive data center that is being called the biggest economic development project in state history.