Pfizer is investing $130 million in two of its Irish manufacturing sites, $100 million in the Grange Castle site in Dublin and $30 million in the Ringaskiddy site in Cork.
The investments, which are supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through IDA Ireland, will enable the sites to expand their capacity and begin producing more advanced, complex therapies for difficult to cure diseases.
“We are seeing the benefits of the investments we’ve been making in our innovative core, as evidenced by recent key launches of medicines for stroke prevention, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer,” said Dr. Paul Duffy, vice president, Pfizer. “There is opportunity for Pfizer’s Irish sites to attract the development of new medicines, while also continuing to manufacture existing medicines.”
The $30 million investment in Ringaskiddy is to develop specialist new capability to manufacture Pfizer’s newest medicines in cancer. This requires flexible development facilities capable of managing a wide range of processes and technology. The introduction of flow processing and innovative technologies requires not just an investment in new equipment but also an increase and deepening of R&D skills, particularly in the area of real-time analytical technologies, flow processing, new technology and scale-up. This investment ensures the Ringaskiddy site will be in a position to be considered for ongoing development work on new products, for both commercial launch and clinical trials.
The $100 million investment in Grange Castle is to create additional manufacturing capacity by expanding the unit that produces protein drug substance using mammalian cell culture biotechnology. This unit makes drug substance for Pfizer’s biologic rheumatoid arthritis treatment. This will release capacity to allow new mammalian biotechnology drug substances from Pfizer’s development pipeline to be manufactured at the site. Preparation is underway to allow construction over the next year, with a peak of 250 construction jobs. The facility will be operational in 2015, when the first process validation batches will be made.
