Astra picks Ireland to build new factory in blow to UK

Bloomberg

AstraZeneca Plc will invest $360 million building a new manufacturing facility for small molecules in Dublin, dashing UK hopes that the drugmaker would develop the site at home.
The plant will ensure that Astra’s global supply network can meet the needs of its pipeline of new medicines, the company said in a statement. The facility will create 100 highly skilled jobs in the life sciences sector, offering a boost to the local economy.
The new site will add capacity to manufacture ingredients for a wide range of medicines, cutting costs and introducing more
sustainable manufacturing processes. Small molecules are mainstay of pharmaceutical drugs and lately have been used in new ways to help target cancer in treatments such as the company’s Enhertu. The deal will “nurture the country’s life sciences sector and allow for the development of high value-added medicines,” according to CEO Pascal Soriot.
Astra said Enhertu, which combines a small molecule with an antibody, reduced the risk of breast-cancer disease progression or death by 72% compared with Roche Holdings Kadcyla — another antibody-drug conjugate.
Astra’s decision to locate the new facility in Dublin follows the completion of the $39 billion takeover of Alexion, a specialist in rare diseases, earlier this year. It also is the outcome of months of detailed negotiations with the Irish government, which has worked to turn Ireland, a low-tax haven for corporations, into a world hub for life sciences.
News that Astra has chosen Ireland will be a blow to the UK post-Brexit, although pharma giant did plow $519 million into creating a new manufacturing and packing facility for its oncology medicine Zoladex in Macclesfield, in the north of England.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited the Macclesfield campus, which employs more than 3,000 people, in April and said it would help propel the country’s ambitions to become a “global life-science superpower.”
Astra shares were little changed in London, trading at 8,541 pence.