Employing more than 2,600 at eight sites in Ireland, it's little wonder that AbbVie was named the biopharma company of the year at the most recent Irish Pharma Industry Awards.
With an investment of 60 million euros ($59.3 million) in its site on the outskirts of Cork, AbbVie will further grow its presence in the Emerald Isle. The expansion will pave the way for a new facility that will employ 70 in support of AbbVie’s aesthetics business.
The new roles will include sterile manufacturing, quality control and engineering, the company said
Construction will begin next year with manufacturing operations set to begin in 2025. The 20-year-old, 14,000-square foot site, which is in the town of Carrigtwohill, currently employs 150 and produces tablets and capsules.
In addition to offices in Dublin, AbbVie has six manufacturing sites in the country, with most of them growing.
In 2020, the year that AbbVie completed its Allergan buyout, the companies opened a second facility in Westport to produce the blockbuster treatment Botox. The $176 million investment brought the sprawling site to 750,000 square feet and 1,400 employees.
Before that, in 2018, AbbVie spent $139 million on an expansion of one of its two plants in Sligo. The investment was to increase the company’s capacity to produce cancer drugs. That splurge was on top of a $115 million outlay in 2014 to produce oral hepatitis C drugs in Sligo.