Pfizer, working through a $3.5 billion cost-cutting drive, is not done yet making changes to its workforce in Ireland.
Weeks after laying off 100 staffers at a manufacturing plant in Newbridge, Kildare, the pharma giant is planning to relocate its workforce in its Citywest, Dublin, campus to Pfizer's Ringsend office in Dublin, The Irish Independent reports.
The company aims to create operational savings through the relocation, a Pfizer spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
While "there will be redundancies" stemming from the move, the company will minimize job cuts by "utilizing open roles and moving talent to other opportunities," the spokesperson added.
The Citywest location currently employs 125 people, while the Ringsend workforce is comprised of 400 employees. Pfizer has five sites in Ireland with a total staff of about 5,000 people.
Pfizer’s Newbridge job cuts earlier this month impacted staffers who helped produce the company’s COVID-19 antiviral Paxlovid. The scale-down came in response to “lower-than-expected utilization” for Pfizer’s COVID products, a spokesperson told Fierce Pharma at the time.
When the company disclosed those layoffs, Pfizer said it anticipated “further changes” through its “wider realignment program." Still, the company said it expected overall growth in its Irish manufacturing operations through 2024.
Some of that growth included 230 new roles that will be added between Pfizer’s sites in Grange Castle, Dublin, and Ringaskiddy, Cork. The Grange Castle plant currently produces the active ingredient for the company’s COVID vaccine Comirnaty, while Paxlovid’s active ingredient is made in Ringaskiddy and made into tablets in Newbridge.
The sites in Ireland aren’t the only facilities that are feeling the effects of Pfizer’s recent cost cuts. Just last week, the company announced hundreds of layoffs in the U.K.
Those job cuts followed 200 at Pfizer’s Kalamazoo, Michigan site and a planned closure of its Peapack, New Jersey site. In Peapack, a “vast majority” of workers will be reassigned to the company’s New York headquarters, a spokesperson said at the time.