With the expiration of a contract to produce antibiotic medicines for Sandoz, GSK will shutter a 75-year-old manufacturing facility in its home country. The U.K. pharma will close its plant in Ulverston in June of next year, terminating the employment of approximately 100. BBC reported the decision over the weekend.
The layoffs—including 200 at another GSK manufacturing site in Barnard Castle—were announced in 2021.
When Sandoz paid $500 million to acquire the rights to sell GSK’s trio of established cephalosporin antibiotics—Zinnat, Zinacef and Fortum—in more than 100 markets around the world, it said it would eventually take over production of the penicillins. Sandoz’s antibiotics production is centered at its site in Kundil, Austria.
With the deal coming during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sandoz was looking to beef up its antibiotics portfolio. It also fit into GSK CEO Emma Walmsley’s strategy to focus on innovative medicines and vaccines and divest other assets.
On Monday, GSK confirmed the planned closure of the Ulverston plant. Over the last few years, the company has been dismantling the under-used facility.
“In 2021, we said that, in the absence of alternatives, we would close our cephalosporins manufacturing operations—including our site at Ulverston—once our contract manufacturing agreement with Sandoz ended in 2025,” a GSK spokesperson wrote in an email. “We understand this has been a difficult and uncertain period for our people at Ulverston. As ever, our first priority is to support them as much as we can.”
The GSK spokesperson added that the company is making a 2 million pound sterling ($2.6 million) donation to the community. GSK also is in “in-depth discussions” with parties that are interested in the land at the Ulverston site.
There is no plan to close the campus at Barnard Castle, where “the vast majority” of employees are unaffected, the GSK spokesperson said, adding that some of the company’s “most innovative medicines,” are produced at the site.