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AstraZeneca to close Brixham environmental lab

pharmafile | October 25, 2013 | News story | Manufacturing and Production API, AstraZeneca, brixham 

AstraZeneca’s UK workers are facing more disruption following the company’s decision to close down a laboratory in Brixham focussing on environmental testing services.

The Devon unit provides support to pharma along with other industries, including testing and risk assessments to understand the environmental impacts of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), intermediates, processes and effluents.

The facility has been in operation since 1948, when it started operations as a unit of ICI paints, and has been part of AZ since 1999.

AZ said the proposal to close the site has been made as the work undertaken at the laboratory is “outside the organisation’s strategic focus of developing innovative new medicines”. The company said it intends to source the services provided by the unit from external contractors. Environmental risk assessment of human medicines is a formal requirement in the EU and US.

The drugmaker envisages a shutdown of Brixham by March 2014, although head of UK operations Tony Broughton did say it was “exploring a range of options for the future of the site”, raising hopes that it may seek a buyer for the lab.

More than 70 people are employed at the site, and local Member of Parliament Sarah Wollaston said she was asking for talks with the company to try to help those affected by the decision, taking to Twitter to express her disappointment that it could mean the loss of ‘such valued scientific posts’.

AZ has already announced sweeping changes to its UK operations this year, cutting 700 positions in the country and transferring both its London headquarters and R&D operations in Alderley Park, Cheshire, to Cambridge, with the relocation of around 1,600 workers.

The UK changes are part of a cost-cutting drive that aims to slash 7,300 jobs across the group by next year, a move which comes on top of around 12,600 job losses between 2007 and 2009 and another 9,000 announced in 2010.

Phil Taylor

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