AstraZeneca to build $200m factory in China
AstraZeneca today showed its appetite for grabbing a larger slice of China's $41 billion (£26 billion) pharmaceuticals market, announcing the country will become home to the most expensive factory it has ever built.
Astra, Britain's second-biggest drugmaker, is to spend $200 million building a huge plant in Jiangsu province, set to be completed by the end of 2013. The factory will make Astra's own branded drugs as well as generic copies of other medicines.
Like other international drugmakers, AstraZeneca is pushing hard into emerging markets because it is suffering the withdrawal symptoms of an emptying drugs cabinet in the west. Jobs are shifting as a result. Last year, it closed down its research facility in Loughborough, with the loss of almost 1200 jobs.
Astra will see a string of lucrative patents running out over the next few years, including Nexium, its $5 billion-a-year blockbuster, and Seroquel, its best-selling bipolar drug. It is only 18 years since Astra first established a presence in China, one of the first Big Pharma firms to do so. Last year its revenues from the country exceeded $1 billion- up from $80 million in 2002.
Research by IMS suggests China's medicine industry will be worth more than $100 billion by 2015.
Astra's chief executive David Brennan wants sales from emerging markets, including China, to constitute a quarter of the firm's total revenues by 2014. Last year, 15% of drug sales came from emerging markets.
Astra already employs 5000 people in China, up from 500 in 2002. Its most popular medicines in the country include heartburn-relief pill Nexium, cholestrol drug Crestor and asthma treatment Symbicort.
Mark Mallon, president of AstraZeneca's China division, claimed the new investment will help "reach out to more of the estimated 900 million people in urban and rural communities who have had less access to high quality medicines".
