Pfizer cuts hundreds of jobs in Britain and Ireland | Business | The Guardian

America's largest drugs company, Pfizer, is to dispose of eight factories and cut 6,000 jobs, including hundreds of positions in Britain and Ireland, as it streamlines its manufacturing operations following a $68bn (£47bn) merger last year with rival pharmaceuticals firm Wyeth.

Pfizer, which makes the erectile disfunction treatment Viagra and the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, said it needed to increase its manufacturing efficiency and eliminate excess capacity to adjust to tough competition in the prescription medicines industry.

The plants include three in the US, two in Puerto Rico and three Irish sites – in Dublin, Loughbeg and Shanbally. Pfizer said it hoped it could sell some of the facilities, rather than shut them.

Furthermore, six factories are to be reduced in size, including a plant in Havant, Hampshire, which packages and distributes biotechnology products. A Pfizer spokesman said 785 jobs were likely to be lost in Ireland, and 90 jobs were set to go in Havant.

Pfizer's president of global manufacturing, Nat Ricciardi, described the decision as "very difficult", but said: "The restructuring of our global plant network is critical to our efforts to remain competitive so that we can continue to meet patient needs and expand the access and affordability of our medicines."

Pfizer's tie-up with Wyeth last year was part of a long-term effort by chief executive Jeffrey Kindler to shift the New York-based multinational away from its reliance on Lipitor, a treatment for high cholesterol that is one of the highest selling medicines in the world. Lipitor accounted for a quarter of Pfizer's $48bn revenue prior to the Wyeth deal but the drug is due to lose its patent protection next year, allowing cheaper copycat products into pharmacies.

The deal with Wyeth brought expertise in several therapeutic areas, including research into Alzheimer's disease and a speciality in the development of vaccines. But in total, some 20,000 jobs are expected to be lost as part of the integration of the two companies.

In the search for broader profit margins, the global drugs industry has seen a spate of mergers over the past few years. Merck and Schering-Plough came together last year in a deal valued at $41bn.

Pfizer's decision to cut back in Ireland is likely to be greeted with gloom. Ciaran Lynch, a Labour member of parliament for the Cork area where two of the plants are located, said: "Cork harbour has often been represented as a pharmaceutical centre of excellence, and rightly so. However, when one of the world's leading producers and a flagship company in the area seeks to reduce its operations so dramatically, it is ominous indeed."

via guardian.co.uk

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