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news.British drugmaker AstraZeneca is investing around $285m to build a new manufacturing facility for biological medicines in Södertälje, Sweden.
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The new Swedish facility will supply medicines for clinical trial programs of AstraZeneca and its R&D arm MedImmune from end of 2018 and will deliver finished products for commercial use once fully operational by 2019.
According to the company, the new manufacturing plant will be focused on filling and packaging of protein therapeutics.
Subject to relevant approvals by the local authorities, the planned investment will create between 150 and 250 new roles at AstraZeneca by 2019.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot 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."
The planned investment of $285m is the first phase of a potential three-part program to expand the company’s biologics manufacturing capabilities.
AstraZeneca president Jan-Olof Jacke said: "Building what will be a world-class facility in this area is not only important to AstraZeneca but we believe it will also add value to the Swedish and Nordic life sciences sector by enhancing the skills base.
"Södertälje will also be considered as the location for the next phases of our programme to expand our global biologics manufacturing capacity.
"In addition to our strong internal capabilities and the access to a highly skilled workforce within the life science sector, we are encouraged by signals from the Swedish Government regarding a competitive and supportive environment for business investment."
The new Swedish facility will support the progression of drug candidates across the main therapy areas and be aligned with investments being made in the current biologics manufacturing centers.
Image: AstraZeneca headquarters in London, UK. Photo: courtesy of AstraZeneca plc.