Pfizer set to invest extra €500m at new Cork facility

Hundreds of new jobs are to be created in Cork by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer as part of a major $500 million (€353 million)expansion of a new biological facility.

Earlier this year, it emerged the drug company had earmarked a site in Shanbally, beside its existing operations in Ringaskiddy, for a $175 million investment that would create roughly 100 jobs. International construction firm Jacobs Engineering has already been contracted to build that stage of the development.

Pfizer is now planning to make at least an additional $500 million investment at the site so that it can commence large-scale commercial production of specialised products that will probably be targeted at oncology and chronic pain treatment. The drugs will be derived from living cells, rather than the chemical compounds traditionally used in pharmaceutical production.

The total planned investment of almost $700 million by Pfizer will come as a major boost to Cork, and represents one of the largest by a pharmaceutical firm in the country in over three years. Earlier this month, US firm Amgen formally mothballed its proposal to construct a €820 million drug plant at Carrigtwohill, also in Cork. This was to eventually employ over 1,000 people.

Pfizer, which already manufactures the active ingredient (sildenafil citrate) for its successful Viagra drug in Cork, is understood to have engaged publicly quoted US firm Fluor to design the plant at Shanbally. It is expected to be fully operational by 2012 and employ over 400 people.

It is believed Pfizer has yet to apply for planning permission for the second phase of the facility. Construction of the first phase is scheduled to begin towards the end of this year and be completed by 2009. Fluor was involved in the design and project management of the massive €1.8 billion Wyeth Medica biopharma site in Grange Castle, Dublin.

Pfizer employs roughly 2,200 people in Ireland, at sites in Cork and Dublin. Last February, it said it would close one of its active pharmaceutical operations at Ringaskiddy and sell two other manufacturing units, at Little Island and Loughbeg, both in Cork.

The Ringaskiddy unit, which employs 65 people, is due to close at the end of the year. Pfizer hopes to sell the sites at Little Island and Loughbeg as going concerns.

Pfizer had invested an estimated $90 million at one of its Ringaskiddy plants to manufacture the active ingredient for a promising new cholesterol treatment called Torcetrapib. However, clinical trials of the drug were halted by Pfizer after an independent monitoring group said patients taking the drug were at an increased risk of dying.

Pfizer had spent $800 million developing the treatment, which it had hoped would help replace lost revenue from its blockbuster Lipitor product, also a cholesterol-lowering drug. Pfizer's Lipitor patent expires in 2011, meaning generic drug manufacturing companies will be free to replicate it and sell it at a substantially reduced price to patients.