Decommission and demolition bill tops €60m at Roche manufacturing site in Clare

Pharma giant Roche has spent close to €60 million to date decommissioning its former plant in Co Clare, according to new figures filed with Companies Office.

Roche Ireland Limited spent €11.53 million on decommissioning and demolishing at the Clarecastle site last year on top of €23.4 million spent dismantling the operation over the previous two years. Separately, the company incurred-related environmental costs of €13.18 million. Roche has spent €9.1 million already in this area in 2020 and 2021.

That brings decommissioning and environmental costs to over €57 million over the past three years on top of the money Roche paid 240 staff made redundant at the site in Clarecastle, and significant impairment costs at the plant and its equipment due to the closure decision.

The Swiss oncology giant made a decision to close the plant – its only manufacturing presence in Ireland – back in 2015 as part of a “strategic realignment” that saw three other plants across its global network closing. Clarecastle had made an active pharmaceutical ingredient for use in the company’s medicines that were manufactured at other sites worldwide.

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Efforts subsequently to sell the site came to nothing and the company’s directors decided to shutter the business in 2020. Manufacturing on the site stopped the previous year and the last of its staff were paid off in May 2021, leaving the Swiss drugs giant with just a sales presence in Ireland.

“The company is continuing with its plan to decommission and demolish its assets,” the directors state in accounts for Roche Ireland Limited for 2022, just filed with Companies Office. “It has successfully transitioned from a manufacturer to a construction site commencing the decontamination and demolition works in 2020, which will continue until 2026.”

Overall, the business reported a full year loss of €26.16 million in 2022, up on the €24.2 million recorded for 2021. The only income for the company was €1.07 million from the sale of scrap metal as the plant is taken apart.

The company secured a new Environmental Protection Agency licence in February under which it will continue the work to return the site to brownfield status. It said there were no conditions in the licence that would result in significant additional material or financial commitments by Roche. There were no public objections to the licence, the company said.

The Clarecastle facility was initially established in 1974 as Syntex Ireland. It became part of Roche following the Swiss group’s $5.3 billion acquisition of Syntex in 1994.