Regeneron Boosts Irish Workforce by 400

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Biopharmaceutical company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: REGN) has announced that it is boosting its Industrial Operations and Product Supply (IOPS) campus in Limerick, Ireland, by 400 jobs.

The expansion comes as the company plans to maximize manufacturing capacity at its New York facility for REGN-COV2, its investigational two-antibody combination being developed for the potential treatment and prevention of COVID-19 infection. The new jobs will take the headcount at the Limerick facility to more than 1,400 and will comprise high-end specialist jobs in commercial manufacturing, process sciences, quality assurance/control, supply chain and various support functions for scientists, chemists and technicians. The facility offers independent clean-room suites with ultra-modern clean utilities to support both single-use and stainless steel cell culture bioreactors and large-scale chromatography systems designed to produce and purify product candidates.Industrial Info is tracking two large projects worth approximately $280 million for the expansion of the main Limerick facility and the addition of an R&D laboratory.

Dan Van Plew, executive vice president and general manager of IOPS at Regeneron said, "As this pandemic hit, we needed to quickly change how we do things and where we make our products. In order to make space in our New York facilities to accommodate our COVID-19 efforts, we needed to ramp-up capacity here in Limerick. Despite ramping up commercial production sooner than planned, my team hasn't missed a beat. You can only perform like this if you have good people, and Ireland has lots of good people, so we are excited to be hiring 400 more."

The decision was welcomed by Ireland's Taoiseach Micheál Martin. "This significant jobs announcement by Regeneron is a further vote of confidence in the skills and talent of our workforce and provides a welcome boost to our economy. Ireland continues to resonate with leading global companies for investment. The government's mission over the coming months and years is to rebuild our society and economy in the post- COVID world. We need to get people back to work and to protect and create sustainable jobs. This announcement is an important and welcome step in that journey."

Regeneron's 64,000-square-metre IOPS facility is located on approximately 20 hectares in the Raheen Business Park, Limerick, and is the largest-scale bulk biologics production facility in Ireland. The facility was commissioned in 2015 at and is responsible for the production, packaging, labeling and supply of Regeneron medicines. The company has invested more than 1 billion euro ($1.2 billion) in the site.

In recent weeks, Regeneron inked a deal with Roche (Basel, Switzerland) to boost future production of its potential COVID-19 drug cocktail REGN-COV2 by up to three and a half times. REGN-COV2 is currently being studied in two Phase 2/3 clinical trials for the treatment of COVID-19 and in a Phase 3 trial for the prevention of COVID-19 in household contacts of infected individuals. If it proves safe and effective in clinical trials and gets regulatory approval, Regeneron will distribute and record sales for REGN-COV2 in the U.S. and Roche will be responsible for distribution for the rest of the world. The partners expect to produce 650,000 to 2 million treatment doses, or 4 million to 8 million preventive doses, of the drug cocktail annually.

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