GE Healthcare unveils €30.5 million production line at Cork plant

The healthcare division of US multinational General Electric (GE) opened its new €30.5 million manufacturing line in Carrigtohill, Co Cork on Friday where it has added 140 jobs at the company’s plant.

The new line is focused on the manufacture of injectable diagnostic imaging agents, dyes known as ‘contrast media’ that are used in X-ray and computed topography or CT procedures to increase the contrast in the images taken. Imaging agents are an area of “significant growth”, due to the “growing global prevalence of chronic disorders”, GE Healthcare said in a statement.

“We expect global demand for iodinated contrast media to double over the next ten years due to the growth of CT imaging procedures,” said Kevin O’Neill, president and chief executive of GE Healthcare’s pharmaceutical diagnostics business. “As an industry leader, we understand our responsibility to help meet this growing demand from customers and patients and this new production line is part of our wider commitment to produce 30 million more patient doses of contrast media annually by 2025.”

The company, which is to be spun out from GE in January, completed the expansion of its footprint at the IDA Business Park in Carrigtohill over two years, investing €30.5 million in the new facility where it currently employs more than 760 people. It said the investment will help grow the Cork plant’s production capacity by 50 per cent over the next three years.

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Eugene Barrett, Ireland site leader at GE Healthcare, said that 2023 marks the company’s 30-year anniversary in Cork and that the new line is essential to its growth plans.

Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Michael McGrath, who attended the opening of the new manufacturing line on Friday, said: “GE Healthcare has consistently invested in manufacturing here in Cork, bringing together state-of-the-art technology, global best practices in pharmaceutical healthcare and a highly qualified workforce.” He said GE’s expansion was “another vote of confidence in Cork as a location for pharmaceutical manufacturing”.

Last November, GE announced plans to split itself into three distinct, publicly traded companies focused on energy, healthcare and aviation to simplify its business and pare down debt.

GE Healthcare is expected to be the first to launch with completion of the spin-off expected as soon as January.

The new board members of the unit, which will be named GE HealthCare, include its chief executive officer, Peter Arduini, as well as executives from Honeywell International and Amazon Web Services. Including GE chief executive Larry Culp as non-executive chairman, the board will have 10 members.