West Pharmaceuticals to open Waterford plant with future 150 jobs

2 Oct 2014

West Pharmaceuticals, one of Ireland’s largest drug administration companies, plans to expand its global manufacturing operations with the construction of a new plant in Waterford that is to result in 150 future jobs.

The new facility is expected to produce packaging components for insulin injector cartridges and other high value packaging components, in order to meet growing demand from pharmaceutical and biotech customers.

Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2015 on the 44-acre site at Knockhouse on Old Kilmeaden Road in Waterford. Both West Pharmaceuticals and the Irish Government envision additional manufacturing space for West’s proprietary injectable component product lines, which could eventually accommodate between 250 and 300 jobs and involve an investment in the range of €100m.

West Pharmaceuticals has been operating in Ireland since 2005, where it has had a manufacturing and development centre in Dublin. That centre, which employs more than 230 people, also serves as European headquarters for the company’s The Tech Group subsidiary.

Highlighting the growth of diabetes as a global killer, West Pharmaceuticals’ CEO Donald E Morel Jr said the new Waterford plant will be important in treatment of the disease.

“With diabetes emerging as one of the fastest-growing diseases globally, our pharmaceutical customers are expanding their production lines for injectable insulin.

“To meet this growing demand, we are announcing an expansion today that will help us address this need and continue to serve this critical patient population.”

Insulin injector image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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