Having deep-sixed its $160 billion merger with Allergan, and the tax savings the inversion deal had promised, Pfizer is already looking at ways to cut costs. Manufacturing looks to be one area where it hopes to cut costs by 20% on some key products in coming years.
That is the message given to employees at Pfizer’s plants in Little Island and Ringaskiddy in Cork County, Ireland, the Irish Examiner reports. The plants make the API for Lipitor and other drugs. The site has already cut costs an average of 34% at the two plants in recent years, improvements that helped the Little Island facility avoid Pfizer’s earlier decision to shutter it.
Seamus Fives, who oversees the two facilities, told the Examiner that the plant employees had “stopped the rot” at the operations but would need to remain focused on efficiency and redouble efforts to be competitive.
The observation followed the decision announced Wednesday by Pfizer and Allergan to cancel their tax inversion-based merger after the U.S. Treasury rolled out even more new rules, specifically targeted at stopping it. The inversion would have cut Pfizer’s U.S. tax bill significantly because it planned on taking on Allergan’s domicile in Ireland, a low-tax country, while its management could have remained ensconced in New York. This deal, and others like it, have been criticized by some politicians and others for being nothing but tax dodges.
The employees in Cork are already steeped in the vicissitudes of the pharma world. The drugmaker announced its plan to consolidate its manufacturing in Ireland in May 2013, expecting to be fully out of the Little Island plant by August 2014. However, due to the efficiency improvements and “unexpected increase” in Lipitor demand, Pfizer postponed the closure and then canceled it last year. The facility, helped by sales strength of a couple of cancer drugs for which it makes the APIs, actually added employees late last year.
By Eric Palmer
Source: Fierce Pharma Manufacturing
CureVac and the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center have announced a co-development and licensing agreement to develop novel messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based cancer vaccines. The strategic collaboration will focus on the development of differentiated cancer vaccine candidates in selected haematological and solid tumour indications with high unmet medical needs.
FUJIFILM Corporation is planning to invest $1.2 billion to expand the planned FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, US. This news follows the organisation’s announcement of a $2 billion investment in the facility in March 2021. This additional financial boost totals the investment to over $3.2 billion, FUJIFILM confirmed.
Sanofi’s global restructuring and downsizing is now fully underway, with layoffs stretching to the company’s Belgian offices. Belgian newspaper De Tijd reports that 67 employees have been laid off at a site in Ghent and 32 jobs are on the chopping block at Sanofi’s Belgium HQ in Diegem.
