Britain’s second-biggest drugmaker to improve Macclesfield facilities but is still not committing to manufacturing expansion

AstraZeneca, Britain’s second-largest drugmaker, is to announce further investment in its Macclesfield site in northern England, in a boost for Britain’s £60bn life sciences industry.

The move, worth tens of millions of pounds, is expected to be announced this week when the government launches its industrial strategy for the sector in Birmingham on Wednesday.

However, there will not be an expansion of manufacturing. The investment will fund technical improvements at the packing site in Macclesfield, Cheshire. AstraZeneca’s £150m factory in Macclesfield produces breast cancer drugs such as Zoladex, one of the firm’s biggest-selling products. About 1,800 people work across the Macclesfield site.

An AstraZeneca spokeswoman said the move was “part of our ongoing investment in the UK”. Mene Pangalos, who runs its innovative medicines and early development biotech unit, is expected to announce the firm’s plans in Birmingham.

AstraZeneca is not committing to manufacturing expansion in the UK as it waits for clarity on the government’s Brexit plans. Last month, its chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said the company would “wait to see” before committing itself to further investment in Britain because of uncertainty in the pharmaceutical industry following the vote to leave the EU, in particular over the regulatory regime for new medicines.

Drugmakers are worried that the approval of new drugs could take longer after Brexit, to the detriment of patients. The EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency, will relocate from London, with Amsterdam tipped as the most likely new base for the agency. Nineteen countries have applied to host the agency once the UK leaves the EU in March 2019, and a decision on the winner is due in November.

In another blow to Britain, two major UK research organisations will lose much of their business to Amsterdam if the Netherlands is successful in its bid.

Soriot said last month that AstraZeneca would carry on investing at its new £500m headquarters in Cambridge, where it will open a biomedical campus next year, which will be its biggest centre globally for cancer research.

AstraZeneca’s latest plans will be announced when Sir John Bell, a Canadian-British immunologist, geneticist and Oxford University professor, lays out his proposals for the life sciences industry this week. His report, backed by the government, is expected to recommend new tax breaks and other support for the sector to boost research and exports of medicines, including an apprenticeship scheme.

UK ministers move to allay Brexit fears over access to medicines Read more

Last week, Britain’s pharma industry called on the government to fund the creation of four new centres of excellence for medicines manufacturing in Britain, at a cost of £140m. The Medicines Manufacturing Industry Partnership (MMIP) argued this would help plug gaps in areas such as diagnostics and packaging, advanced therapy production and small molecule processing, and create highly skilled jobs in the regions.

Andy Evans, head of AstraZeneca’s Macclesfield operations, who chairs the MMIP, said: “The UK is already one of the best places in the world to research and develop exciting new medicines for hard-to-treat diseases, but needs to improve when it comes to manufacturing and packaging them ready to go to patients.”

GlaxoSmithKline, Britain’s biggest drugmaker, recently said it would scale back its presence in Britain, the first major move by the company’s new chief executive, Emma Walmsle. The firm said it would sell its Horlicks UK brand, shut the Slough factory where the malt drink is made, ditch plans for a new biopharmaceutical factory in Cumbria, and outsource some manufacturing from its Worthing site in West Sussex, with the loss of 320 jobs in Britain.

AstraZeneca has moved all its research and development from the Alderley Park laboratories in Macclesfield to Cambridge.