icWales - Norgine creates 200 jobs as it targets rising worldwide demand

AN expansion at Norgine's South Wales pharmaceutical plant will create more than 200 jobs. The company's latest phase in an expansion programme, which has seen the investment of £8m in its Hengoed plant in Caerphilly County, will nearly double its workforce of 250. Welsh Development Agency chairman, Roger Jones, officially opened a new packaging facility at Norgine's manufacturing base yesterday. The extension to the main plant is designed to enable Norgine to keep pace with rising demand in Europe and around the world for its range of unique pharmaceutical products aimed mainly at gastrointestinal illness. More than half of the Hengoed plant's total output by value last year was exported to continental Europe, Asia and Africa. Norgine is part of a pan-European group whose main manufacturing bases are in Wales and France and which has a network of more than 80 distributors around the world. Over the past six years, Norgine has pursued an ambitious expansion programme at Hengoed, which has raised its working team from 99 to 227 and raised the plant's output to 11.4 million packs of sachets, tablets, capsules and liquids in 2002, with a projected 30% increase for 2003. Norgine managing director, Peter Harsant, said, "We have had the confidence to invest heavily in Wales because of the excellence of the working team at Hengoed and because of the support and encouragement we've received from the Welsh Assembly Government and the Welsh Development Agency. We have an extremely loyal and committed workforce here . We've found that we can recruit high quality staff locally to maintain our expansion programme - and we believe that we are going to continue to flourish here in Wales." WDA chairman, Roger Jones, said that Norgine's continued growth reinforced one of the most important sectors in the economy. Mr Jones, who established one of Wales's pharmaceutical companies Penn, said, "Britain has an extremely successful pharmaceutical industry. Export sales of medicines from the UK provided Britain with a trade surplus of £2.6bn in 2001. "Biosciences in general are the fastest growing sector of the British economy and therefore it's extremely important for Welsh prosperity that we are well-represented in this field. "The agency is delighted that Norgine is adding to this sector of our economy and demonstrating to the industry at large how specialist pharmaceutical producers can find the right conditions for outstanding growth in the South Wales Valleys," he said.