Pharmaceuticals company Norbrook is creating up to 300 jobs over the next five years in an £83 million (€119 million) investment, the company has announced.
Lord Ballyedmond, better known as former senator Edward Haughey, said the expansion would target the overseas veterinary pharmaceuticals market, particularly the lucrative US pet sector.
The investment, supported by £3 million from industrial development agency Invest Northern Ireland, also seeks to boost its manufacture of pharmaceutical ingredients and to develop what the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment calls "new manufacturing and product formulation methods".
Norbrook already employs about 880 workers at three sites in Newry, Co Down, and has other plants in Monaghan town as well as in Kenya and the Czech Republic.
Lord Ballyedmond emphasised the need to boost research and development and to enhance graduate work experience.
"Research and development in the veterinary and medical industries is not as prolific as it used to be," he said.
"There is a huge amount of proving you have to do that a product is safe. In the pet industry it's a little easier in that you are not entering the food chain. It is as onerous but does not take as long to prove that the product works. The type of products we are looking at is in the parasite area. We are also looking at easier modes of administration of these products."
Research was "very much lacking" in veterinary pharmaceuticals, he said. "We have a lot of very well-educated people, we have great universities doing an excellent job. But we are not giving these people the experience that is needed in this particular industry and we don't have the facilities to do that."
Lord Ballyedmond, the recently appointed chairman of the Northern Ireland Exporters' Association, said he hoped to establish a new liaison between industry and universities abroad, thus helping to provide what he called "a coal-face experience in exporting, selling and marketing".
He also promised a new industrial outreach programme involving local schools in the Newry area.
Enterprise Minister Nigel Dodds welcomed the investment, especially the creation of high-end, high-salary positions that were unlikely to be exported to lower wage economies in the Far East.
"This kind of investment is in the manufacturing sector and [ Norbrook] is putting significant amounts of its own money into innovation, research and development," he said.
"By growing the economy in these high-value-added sectors where jobs will be created which are above the average private sector income, we will grow the economy overall and help to narrow the productivity gap between ourselves and the rest of the UK which is too big."
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