AstraZeneca recently announced that it planned to invest nearly $285 million to expand its biotech drug manufacturing in Sweden. The new facility, focused on filling and packaging of protein therapeutics, will be built in Sodertalje.
The $285 million planned investment is the first phase of a potential three-part program to expand AstraZeneca's biologics manufacturing capabilities, said the company in its press realease.
AstraZenaca announced that the facility will supply medicines for clinical trial programs from the end of 2018 and will deliver finished products for commercial use once fully operational by 2019. The company further said that the new facility will create nearly 150-200 new highly skilled roles by 2019.
Mr Pascal Soriot, CEO, said, "This is a strategically important investment for AstraZeneca to support the accelerating development of biotech medicines, which now make up around half of our pipeline. We expect to bring a significantly increased number of new specialty care medicines to patients in the coming years, driven in large part by biologics. This new plant will give us greater capacity and flexibility to handle clinical trials, and will also play an important role in our future commercial production."
Sodertalje is currently home to AstraZeneca's largest global tablets and capsules manufacturing facility and is also a launch platform site for the company, with specialist capabilities on-site that allow large-scale production of new medicines.
