AstraZeneca reveals Alderley Park plan
pharmafile | May 8, 2013 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | AstraZeneca, BioCity, R&D, alderley
AstraZeneca has left a key question about what to do with its soon-to-be defunct R&D site in Cheshire in the hands of BioCity Nottingham.
In March AstraZeneca announced that 600 jobs would go at Alderley Park and it has now appointed BioCity, which specialises in setting up life sciences businesses, to establish a new centre for bioscience companies at the site.
AstraZeneca is stopping R&D at the facility as part of a major restructure of its operations, moving to a new UK research hub and HQ in Cambridge by 2016, with around 1,600 staff expected to relocate over the next three years.
Three tenants have already agreed to move onto the site, which will be called The BioHub: they are Blueberry Therapeutics, Imagen Biotech and Redx Anti-Infectives, a subsidiary of Redx Pharma.
“We are delighted to welcome three innovation-driven companies to Alderley Park,” said Clive Morris, AstraZeneca’s head of new opportunities innovative medicines unit. “I am confident that with BioCity’s experience in this area we can continue to seek further opportunities to attract future investment and build on the existing world-class facilities available.”
BioCity has already established similar centres in Nottingham and Scotland and chief executive Glenn Crocker believes connections can be built between firms at the three locations “which could ultimately transform the way life science innovation is achieved”.
AstraZeneca’s decision to axe R&D operations, and the attendant redundancies at the high profile site, have concentrated the minds of the government in general – and of chancellor George Osborne in particular since it falls within his Tatton constituency.
This is why Osborne attended the first meeting last week of a ‘task force’ – set up for a year initially – in which AstraZeneca and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills will look at ways in which the site might be best used in future.
Chaired jointly by Morris and by Chris Brinsmead, the government’s life sciences adviser, it comprises local business people and politicians, including Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council and Macclesfield MP David Rutley.
“In order to plan for the future we must first understand the real impact of the changes at Alderley Park at local and regional level,” said Brinsmead. “This will help us to identify and assess options for future use of the site.”
The pharma company is at pains to point out that it will retain a presence in the North-west, in Macclesfield, at its MedImmune vaccine manufacturing facility in Speke and at Alderley Park itself, where it plans to keep 700 non-R&D jobs.
Adam Hill
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