The $360 million investment, which is expected to create some 100 skilled jobs, including for scientists and engineers, will be located at the College Park campus of Alexion, the US biotech acquired by AstraZeneca this past summer for $39 billion. The Cambridge, England-based company’s first investment in Ireland will focus on improving late-stage development and early commercial supply and is designed to meet the needs of its new medicines pipeline.

Developed with financial support from Ireland’s investment agency, IDA Ireland, the project will leverage state-of the-art process technology and digital innovation, AstraZeneca said, adding that it expects to make a variety of products at the Dublin campus, including new drugs such as antibody drug conjugates and oligonucleotides.

Among other things, the new facility is also expected to significantly reduce commercialization lead times as well as costs and at the same time introduce more sustainable manufacturing processes that can contribute to the drugmaker’s Ambition Zero Carbon program.

Introducing the plans, Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s CEO, said the “very significant” investment “will nurture the country’s dynamic life sciences sector and allow for the development of high value-added medicines.”  Ireland’s Taoiseach (prime minister) Micheál Martin noted that AstraZeneca “joins the very strong and successful network of global life sciences companies we have in Ireland.”

Thanks especially to the IDA’s encouragement and financial aid for pharmaceutical projects, many international drugmakers have the Irish republic on their radar for new investments. Janssen Sciences Ireland, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology arm of US healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson, said earlier this month it had submitted a planning application for a €150 million expansion of its biomedicines facility at Ringaskiddy, County Cork.

Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist