MDS Inc. plans to sell off one of its last remaining non-core businesses, and 225 Montreal-area jobs will be lost in the process.

The Canadian life sciences company will get $45 million in cash and notes in a series of transactions to sell its MDS Pharma Services Early Stage business.

3-month stock chart for MDS Inc. on the TSX (CBC)

Ricerca Biosciences LLC will buy the MDS Discovery and Pre-Clinical operations with three locations in the United States, France and Taiwan.

A new company owned by private investment firms Bain Capital and SV Life Sciences will buy other parts of the divested operations, including clinics and bioanalytical labs, and the company's development and regulatory services consultancy.

MDS employed a total of 1,700 people at 10 locations before the breakup. The transactions are expected to take roughly two months to be finalized.

The decommissioning of the Montreal site will take place in stages over the next 12 months and is expected to be completed by the end of February 2011, the company said.

The cost of employee severance is estimated to be in the range of $18 million to $21 million, and MDS has retained pension obligations of approximately $3 million.

A site in Pennsylvania is also excluded from the plan. Although some of the positions there will be swallowed by the new owners, roughly 50 jobs will be lost.

With files from The Canadian Press