Pennsylvania-based West Pharmaceutical is again looking east for expansion. The maker of drug container components and drug delivery systems for injectable therapies, which recently opened a plant in India, is now looking at adding a facility in Ireland that could run to €100 million.
That is what sources are telling the Irish Times. They say that negotiations for the $131.5 million investment, and potentially hundreds of new jobs, have been ongoing for months.
The company declined to say anything specific but also did not flatly deny it. "We are a growing business. We are always evaluating potential investments and opportunities. At this time no plan for any investment has been finalized," Emily Denney, West Pharma's senior global communications director, told the newspaper.
IDA Ireland (Industrial Development Agency), which often offers incentives to pharma companies to locate in Ireland, was also circumspect. It acknowledged that improvements were being made at what is known as the Knockhouse site in Waterford. "In order to enhance the attributes of this site to potential inward investors, IDA has asked Waterford City and County Council to carry out site-leveling works during the summer/autumn of 2014," it said.
In July, West opened its first site in India. The first phase of a 10-year building plan was a 15,300-square-meter (165,000-square-foot) metal seal assembly and compression molding facility to produce metal and elastomeric pharmaceutical components for injectable drug packaging. Its plans call for eventually having a 37,700-square-meter (406,000-square-foot) complex. It expects to start manufacturing its standard elastomeric components at the facility next year and ready-to-sterilize components beginning in 2016.
- read the Irish Times story