Eisai Inc. Doubles Down On U.K. Packaging Plant With £8 Million Investment; Boost Employment By 10%
November 26, 2014
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Editor
Japanese biopharma firm Eisai will invest more than £8 million into a new facility in Hatfield, England and increase employment there by 10 percent, as it expands its EMEA Knowledge Centre at the site to focus on investigational compound lenvatinib for the treatment of advanced thyroid cancer.
Eisai established the £100 million EKC in Hatfield in June 2009 as a way to consolidate its European research, clinical development, production, marketing and EMEA headquarters. In 2012, the site became the first global, solid dose manufacture supply site outside of Japan for the antiepilepsy drug Fycompa (perampanel).
The new two-story 2,900 square meter addition expands the current Hatfield site by nearly 40 percent. The plant currently employs 500 people and has the capacity to produce up to 450 million tablets in 10 million packs each year.
"We are extremely proud of this new development at our EMEA Knowledge Centre. The UK is an ideal location for advanced manufacturing. We are committed to the life sciences industry in this country and it will continue to play a pivotal role in our commercial growth strategy," said Haruo Naito, chief executive officer of Eisai, in a statement.
"This new high tech facility enhances our capability as a center of packaging excellence for our growing product range," he added. "As we supply products to an increasing number of countries with different languages across the world, our facility needs to cope with an extremely high mix of low-volume packaging for often difficult-to-handle compounds. The new machines were tailor-made and allow for reconfiguration of every product run particular to each national market we supply. Lenvatinib will be packaged exclusively at Hatfield and eventually export to almost 200 countries, contributing positively to the U.K. balance of trade."
Lenvatinib was granted orphan drug designation for follicular and papillary thyroid cancer by the European Commission in 2013 and is awaiting approval for the same designation for regulators for the European Union, U.S. and Japan. The European Medicines Agency has accepted a request for accelerated approval of lenvatinib for advanced thyroid cancer.
Eisai said the new addition reflects the company’s commitment to a long-term global business structure inside the key hub of Britain.
"Pharmaceuticals manufacturing is important to our economy, with more than £22 billion worth of exports in 2013 and a positive trade balance of just over £2 billion. Eisai's investment in this new facility will help grow these figures and is another vote of confidence for the UK's world-class life sciences sector," said George Freeman MP, Minister for Life Sciences, in a statement.
"The [British] government continues in its commitment to ensure that the UK life sciences sector is innovative and flexible, through new measures announced last week such as the Innovative Medicines and MedTech Review and the latest round of Biomedical Catalyst funding,” he said. “We are committed to finding new ways to improve the lives of patients and give companies the confidence to invest and create jobs in the U.K.”