Pharma Giant Astrazeneca To Spend $100M On Australia Expansion

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca will spend $100M expanding its Sydney facility, a move it says will add 60 jobs and boost exports to more than $2.4B over the next four years.

The announcement was made in London last night at a meeting between AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

“Our latest investment is an example of the tremendous opportunities presented by hi-tech manufacturing and productivity, creating jobs, boosting exports and ultimately making a positive impact on the Australian economy,” Mr Soriot said.

The company said the investment would fund three specialised production lines at the North Ryde facility for innovative respiratory medicines.

AstraZeneca has invested $105M at the facility in the last five years. The three new specialised production lines are in addition to eight existing specialised lines at the site.

Melbourne-based specialist machine designers Andrew Donald Design Engineering will build each new production line and the machines will take a team of 36 people over 12 months to produce.

“Despite the trend for manufacturing businesses to relocate to countries where labour costs are lower, we’re investing and expanding our manufacturing operations in Australia with locally manufactured equipment,” said Mark Morgan, manufacturing director of AstraZeneca Australia.

Each production line has the capacity to produce over 70 million units per year of Pulmicort Respules, a medicine for patients with asthma. The medicine is produced in Australia for export markets, including China.

It is predicted that by 2025 AstraZeneca’s site will be producing over one billion respules.

Mr Morgan said the company’s manufacturing model was based on hi-tech production that was difficult to replicate.

“The machinery is a credit to Australian engineering excellence and its performance can be attributed to our workforce who achieves significant increases in productivity and efficiency out of the machines,” he said.