Pfizer in break up talks for Sandwich research site
pharmafile | March 1, 2011 | News story | Research and Development | Kent, Pfizer, Sandwich, job cuts
Pfizer is in confidential talks over the future of its Sandwich, Kent research facility that could see the site broken up into smaller units and run by other companies.
Site director Dr Ruth McKernan told MPs yesterday the company is working on 10 deals to mitigate the impact of its decision to close the facility by 2013 with the loss of around 2,400 jobs.
She was one of four senior Pfizer executives called before the Science and Technology Select Committee to answer questions about what is currently Pfizer’s main European R&D site.
Dr McKernan and her colleagues refused to provide further information on the deals, disappointing the MPs present, who insisted on – and received – a private meeting on the issue with the four executives directly after the hearing.
McKernan did say she was in active talks with her staff regarding their future and believed many would have the opportunity to either stay on with new buyers for the site or create their own ‘spin out’ firms.
She also said that around 150 Sandwich staff are set to move to its secondary research site in Cambridge that primarily deals with pain treatments.
Pfizer is adamant that neither a lack of tax incentives nor UK research staff are behind the closure of Sandwich, placing the blame instead on global forces and the resulting need for a new business model.
This has seen the firm shift its R&D focus to just five therapy areas and Sandwich, which focuses on allergy and respiratory medicines, will lose out after Pfizer decided the two areas have not delivered a sufficient return on investment.
Olivier Brandicourt, president of Pfizer’s primary care business unit, said: “To fix the R&D engine we must concentrate on a limited number of therapy areas as we can now longer afford to do them all – Sandwich was unfortunately a casualty of this process.”
Brandicourt also said that the costs involved in its 2009 merger with Wyeth were not a factor and that Wyeth had in fact brought greater research advantages to the company.
Also called before the Select Committee was Richard Barker, outgoing director general of the ABPI.
He told the MPs that Sandwich was a victim of a ‘perfect storm’ that has seen greater price pressures on governments, high loss-making patent expiries and growing expenses in getting drugs to market.
Both he and Pfizer executives said it now costs between $1.6 – $2 billion to bring a medicine to market and unless this can be reduced, it would only be more difficult for pharma to see successful drug approvals.
Barker said the closure should be a “very loud wake up call” for the UK but added that Pfizer was only one of a number of companies that were forced by ‘global forces’ to close R&D sites in the UK and around the world.
Ben Adams
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