GSK Invests in UK Manufacturing

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) will invest £200 million ($327 million) to expand its manufacturing facilities in Ware, Hertfordshire and Worthing, Sussex in the United Kingdom and establish a new manufacturing innovation facility. The investment is in addition to a £500 million ($818 million) investment that GSK made in March 2012, which included a commitment to build a new factory in Ulverston, Cumbria in the UK.

GSK will invest in new manufacturing facilities in Ware for its Relvar (zanamivir) Ellipta used for respiratory disease. The Ellipta device was developed at Ware and will now be produced at the site before being exported worldwide. GSK’s manufacturing site at Ware employs 800 staff, of whom more than 500 make respiratory products. The site exports more than 35 million packs of respiratory products to 120 countries as well as shipping more than 400 million tablets a year.

In Worthing, GSK will build a new bulk sterile building and filling line for its antibiotic Augmentin (amoxicillin and clavulanate), which is exported to 150 countries. GSK’s Worthing site has more than 950 employees making both active ingredients and finished medicines that are supplied to 157 markets worldwide. In the last full year, the site supplied more than 100 million packs of medicines and more than 1000 metric tons of bulk products.

GSK will also build a new center for manufacturing innovation dedicated to transforming emerging science and technologies, such as nanotechnology and biocatalysis, into practical manufacturing applications. Although subject to further decisions, GSK’s preferred site for the location of the new center is Ware, Hertfordshire, where the company already has manufacturing and R&D facilities in one location.

Roger Connor, GSK’s president of global manufacturing and supply, says the new investments in the UK were encouraged by the UK’s Patent Box, a corporate tax incentive based on investment in patents. The Patent Box scheme came into force in April 2013. The scheme allows companies to apply a lower rate of corporation tax to profits earned from its patents after this date (as well as profits arising from supplementary protection certificates, regulatory data protection and plant variety rights). The relief is phased in over a four-year period from April 2013. Once the full benefit of the regime is in effect, the lower rate of corporation tax to be applied to these profits will be 10%. This 10% rate will apply from April 2017, according to the UK Intellectual Property Office.

Source: GlaxoSmithKline