GSK to invest £200m in UK manufacturing plants

Published: 11-Dec-2013

Plants in Ware, Hertfordshire and Worthing, West Sussex will be upgraded with new state-of-the-art equipment

GlaxoSmithKline is to invest approximately £200m on advanced manufacturing in the UK to support the delivery of its pipeline and to create a centre for pharmaceutical manufacturing innovation.

The firm's plants in Ware, Hertfordshire and Worthing, West Sussex will be upgraded with new state-of-the-art equipment. In addition GSK will establish a new facility using innovative technologies that could transform both the way medicines are made and the company’s supply chain.

Roger Connor, GSK’s President of Global Manufacturing and Supply, said the new investments are in addition to last year's announcement that GSK would build its first new UK factory for 40 years in Ulverston, Cumbria.

He said the upgrades would allow the firm 'to harness new technologies that have the potential to deliver a step-change in how we make medicines'.

These new technologies could significantly reduce costs, improve quality and enable the manufacture of medicines in weeks rather than years, he added.

The new manufacturing facility in Ware will produce the Relvar Ellipta inhaler for respiratory disease before it is exported worldwide.

The upgrades will allow GSK to harness new technologies that have the potential to transform how it makes medicines

The Ware plant employs 800 staff, of whom more than 500 make respiratory products including Relvar/Breo. The site exports more than 35 million packs of respiratory products to 120 countries, as well as shipping more than 400 million tablets a year.

In Worthing, a new bulk sterile building and filling line will be built for the company’s leading antibiotic medicine Augmentin, which is exported to 150 countries.

The Worthing site has more than 950 employees making both active ingredients and finished medicines. In the last full year the plant supplied more than 100 million packs of medicines and more than 1,000 tonnes of bulk products.

The new centre for manufacturing innovation will turn emerging science and technologies into practical manufacturing applications. These technologies will range from mimicking nature using enzymes and biologically inspired catalysts to using nano-technologies to create intelligent drug product formulations which minimise side-effects and enhance efficacy.

Although subject to further decisions, GSK says its preferred site for the new centre is Ware, where the company already has manufacturing and R&D facilities in one location.

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