New facilities at MSD's County Cork site opened

Published: 24-Jun-2011

The facilities represent an investment of 28.6m euros and provide 70 new jobs


This week saw the official opening of two new facilities at MSD’s Brinny site in Co. Cork. The new facilities include the Brinny Bioassay Centre of Expertise and the Brinny Pneumococcal Vaccine Conjugation Facility.

The Brinny facilities (previously known as Schering-Plough) represented a financial investment of €28.6m and the provision of 70 jobs, according to the Minister for Research and Innovation, Séan Sherlock TD, who opened the plant. He was joined by Dr Mike Kamarck, president Merck BioVentures and senior vice president, Vaccines and Biologics Manufacturing at Merck & Co Inc, along with other senior MSD representatives and ceo IDA Ireland, Barry O’Leary.

The new Brinny Bioassay Centre of Expertise will focus on bioassays for therapeutic protein products and will support other MSD sites including Carlow. Brinny has 20 years expertise in bioassay, which was a major contributing factor in MSD’s decision to base the Bioassay Centre of Expertise at Brinny. It will employ 10 people.

The Brinny Pneumococcal Vaccine Conjugation Facility will produce vaccine for clinical trials in immunisation against pneumococcal disease for paediatric use.

MSD is a supplier of adult pneumococcal vaccine globally, having distributed more than 140m doses worldwide. Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) will protect infants from this life‐ threatening disease, which is the leading cause of vaccine‐preventable death in children less than five years old worldwide.

The Brinny facility will employ 60 people initially through construction, commissioning, qualification and clinical supply phases and 30 technicians long term, subject to clinical trial success. The facility will have the capacity to produce 100 million doses of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine a year.

MSD in Ireland employs some 2,300 people through operations in Carlow, Cork, Dublin, Tipperary and Wicklow. The Brinny site is an API and sterile manufacturing centre of expertise. Established in 1980, 511 people are currently employed at the site.

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