Abbott, GSK cut staff at Irish facilities
pharmafile | February 26, 2013 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Abbottt, GSK, IrelandÂ
GlaxoSmithKline and Abbott have both announced job cuts at their facilities in Ireland in a blow to the country’s pharmaceutical sector.
Abbott is hoping to make around 200 voluntary redundancies at its vascular devices manufacturing facility in Clonmel, Tipperary. Meanwhile GSK has said it intends to close down a unit in Cork which provides financial services support to its Irish operations, with the loss of some 94 jobs.
The news is a fresh setback for Ireland’s drug industry, coming after Abbott decided to cut 180 jobs at its nutritionals facility in Sligo last October and Pfizer’s decision to cut a similar number from its unit in Cork.
On the plus side, however, there have been gains in recent months such as Sanofi’s €44 million investment in its Waterford facility, GSK’s reprieve for a plant in Sligo – operated by its Stiefel subsidiary – that had been threatened with closure, and a €76 million investment in Dublin and Galway which should net 500 new jobs.
Abbott’s decision has come about after it split its research-based pharmaceutical business into a separate company called AbbVie, a move which has prompted an examination of its manufacturing network.
The company, which retained its diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals and branded generics businesses – is expanding capacity in the US, China and India with three new manufacturing facilities due to come online in 2014, and has been trying to drive down manufacturing costs across its divisions to boost profits.
Clonmel currently employs around 1,400 staff, but will be downsized as it starts to focus on fewer, more profitable devices such as the firm’s ABSORB, a new drug-eluting bioresorbable vascular scaffold for patients with coronary artery disease.
“The proposed redundancies are part of adjustments we are making to meet the evolving needs of the business and to remain competitive in a challenging global environment,” said Abbott in a statement, adding that Clonmel “remains strategically important to Abbott’s global vascular manufacturing network”.
Around 40 contractor positions due to come to an end next month will also not be renewed, said the company, which has implemented a 30-day consultation period on the redundancy plan.
Meanwhile, GSK’s decision to close the business centre in Cork comes as the company has decided to centralise these functions in the UK, according to local media reports.
Phil Taylor
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