AstraZeneca in January also stopped its $610 million plans to construct a vaccine R&D and manufacturing site in the U.K.
AstraZeneca has put on ice its £200 million (roughly $271 million) investment in the U.K., becoming the latest pharma powerhouse to cut back planned operations in the European country.
A spokesperson from the company confirmed this news to Reuters on Saturday, noting that “we constantly reassess the investment needs of our company and can confirm our expansion in Cambridge is paused.” The spokesperson declined to provide additional details on the decision.
AstraZeneca first announced this U.K. commitment in March 2024, noting that the money will be used to beef up its life sciences research campus in Cambridge, where it is headquartered. Once complete, the pharma expected this investment to create 1,000 new jobs. The Cambridge commitment also came with a £450 million—around $610 million—pledge to construct a vaccine R&D and manufacturing plant in Liverpool.
These plans have since been dashed. Aside from Saturday’s pullback, AstraZeneca revealed in January this year that it will no longer be moving ahead with its vaccine project in the U.K. “Several factors have influenced this decision including the timing and reduction of the final offer compared to the previous government’s proposal,” a company spokesperson told Reuters at the time.
Then, during the pharma’s first-quarter business call in April, CEO Pascal Soriot warned that the U.K., and Europe more broadly, had to step its game up and invest more resources into biopharma—or risk losing out to the U.S. and to China.
“When you see the amount of investment that is currently going into the US, it really sends a very strong signal that Europe has to contribute to innovation and pharmaceutical innovation a lot more,” Soriot said at the time, according to reporting from The Guardian. Otherwise, he added, “all these jobs, whether they are manufacturing jobs or R&D jobs, are going to move to the U.S. over time.”
That same month, a coalition of pharma companies—including AstraZeneca and Pfizer—wrote to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, outlining several requests to help these firms maintain their presence in the region. Among these are compensations to recoup the costs of scientific innovation and a simpler regulatory framework.
Also curtailing plans in the U.K. is Merck, which last week announced that it would no longer push through with its roughly $1.3-billion R&D facility there. Merck will also end its R&D efforts in the country, saying it expects to wrap them up by the end of the year. According to a company spokesperson at the time, this pullout will cost the U.K. 125 jobs.
