The site in Currabinny, Cork has been in operation since 1975 and currently manufactures nine active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for GlaxoSmithKline’s pharma portfolio. Since then it has seen over €700m of investment from the firm.
But with this latest investment, GSK is looking at its future product range across diseases such as cancer, HIV and depression, the firm said, adding a €9.5m kilo-scale manufacturing facility and a €2.5m technical development laboratory.
“Our new Kilo Scale Facility represents an important new opportunity for GSK in Cork,” said the firm’s Head of Engineering Kevin O’Keefe. “The plant will expand our operating scale to allow us introduce new targeted medicines that require highly specialised manufacturing equipment.”
The Site Director, Joe Power, added the investment “demonstrates GSK’s strong commitment” to Cork and Ireland. “It’s a wonderful endorsement of the world-class technical capability we have here and will work to attract new business for the operation.”
The Currabinny site has seen a fair amount of drama over the past few years. In 2010, GSK axed 121 jobs due to “changing market situations.”
And in 2014, the site was hit with a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Warning Letter after inspectors found a number of GMP violations including equipment used to make API batches to be “contaminated with material from [its] pharmaceutical waste tank.”
This led to GSK issuing a recall of its antidepressant drug Paxil made at the site.
The FDA issued a close-out letter last August.