Bristol-Myers Squibb Company To Create Up To 400 New Jobs As Part Of A $900 Million Investment

November 14, 2014

By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company , headquartered in New York, announced today that it will be building a new biologics manufacturing plant in Cruiserath, Ireland, which is expected to create up to 400 new jobs in a 30,000-square meter facility that will house six 15,000-liter bioreactors, a purification center and office and laboratory space.

“Our investment in this new facility reflects the strengths of our business and the increasingly important role that biologic medicines will play in Bristol-Myers Squibb’s future,” said the company’s CEO Lamberto Andreotti, in a statement. “For 50 years, Bristol-Myers Squibb has maintained a significant manufacturing presence in Ireland, and we look forward to building on that legacy through this significant expansion of our manufacturing capability.”

The project is expected to cost about $900 million and will be finalized in the last half of 2015. The facility will be used to manufacture drugs that result from genetically engineering living organisms.

Ireland is a booming location for the manufacture of biotech derived drugs and pharmaceutical compounds. According to PharmaChemical Ireland, an Ibec group that represents the Irish drugs and chemicals industries, this new investment brings the total monies invested in the Irish industry to over €3 billion in new capital.

“It sends a clear message that Ireland has moved past the challenges presented by the so-called patent cliff,” said PCI Director Matt Moran in an Irish Times article, “and is poised for a new phase of growth.”

“I greatly welcome this investment by Bristol-Myers Squibb, which is a huge boost to the Irish economy,” said Irish Prime Minster Enda Kenny in a statement. “I had the opportunity to meet with Bristol-Myers Squibb, and I’m delighted they chose Ireland as the location for this large, state-of-the-art facility. Not only will 1,000 construction jobs be created in the initial phase, but the facility will support up to 400 jobs for skilled professionals. The government has a plan to secure recovery so that Ireland can attract new jobs and investments such as those being announced today.”

Those jobs will include engineers, bioprocess operators, quality specialists and others. Construction is expected to take about four years, with the facility becoming operational in 2019.

“The biopharma industry is continuing to show impressive growth with 50 per cent of medicines in the global pipeline derived form biotechnology,” said Reg Shaw, chief executive of the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) in the Irish Times. “Worldwide sales of biopharmaceuticals were estimated at $163 billion in 2012 with seven of the top ten bestselling pharmaceutical products coming from biotech.”