AstraZeneca to invest £120 million in new manufacturing facility to produce Zoladex in Macclesfield

AstraZeneca today announced plans to invest £120 million ($190 million) in a new facility at its global manufacturing site in Macclesfield, UK, to continue production of Zoladex, an injectable treatment for patients with prostate cancer. The investment secures 300 existing Zoladex jobs at the site and will create over 200 temporary jobs during the construction and commissioning phase between now and early 2017.

Zoladex has been manufactured at AstraZeneca’s Macclesfield plant for over 25 years, supplying the medicine to more than one hundred markets around the world. It continues to be an important asset in AstraZeneca’s oncology portfolio and is currently the company’s fifth largest selling brand with annual sales in the region of $1 billion.

David Smith, Executive Vice-President, Operations at AstraZeneca said: “Zoladex is one of AstraZeneca’s leading cancer drugs, supplied to patients across the globe. This new facility will support the continued production of this important medicine in the UK. Having considered a number of options globally, we believe it is the right choice to build the new facility in Macclesfield, which has been home to Zoladex manufacturing – and the expertise that goes along with it – for many years. This investment is a further signal of our long term commitment to the UK, and to the North West.”

Commenting on the new investment, the Rt Hon George Osborne MP said: “This is great news for our local community which will save and create hundreds of manufacturing jobs. Macclesfield MP David Rutley and I fought really hard along with the local council and local people to achieve this. This investment could have gone anywhere around the world – the fact it has come to Macclesfield shows what a superb site it is. It comes on top of the hundreds of new jobs being created on the Alderley Park site by new business after the difficult news there earlier this year. It’s a real vote of confidence in East Cheshire.”

As a sterile subcutaneous injectable product, Zoladex is manufactured under highly specialised conditions, following a complex, multistage formulation process. This requires a range of high-specification equipment in a controlled operating environment to ensure aseptic production. The continued global demand for Zoladex, particularly in Japan and emerging markets including China and Russia, has resulted in the decision to invest in replacing some of the existing facilities where the medicine is currently produced at the Macclesfield site.

The building of the new facility will begin in 2013 and is due to be completed by 2016. Products manufactured in the new facility will begin to be supplied to markets in 2017.