GE Healthcare Reveals New Plants for Ireland

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut), is planning to invest 150 million euro ($167 million) to build a new bio-pharmaceutical manufacturing campus in Cork, Ireland.

The company, which already employs around 600 people in Cork, said its planned GE BioPark Cork will comprise four prefabricated, off-the-shelf biologics factories for GE customers and is expected to create around 500 jobs. Located at Industrial Development Agency (IDA) Ireland's strategic site at Loughbeg, Ringaskiddy, they will be first GE-patented KUBio prefabricated factories in Europe.

Construction of GE BioPark Cork is expected to kick off by mid-2017, subject to planning approvals. It is expected that 400 of the jobs will be with biopharma companies and a further 100 employed directly by GE. In addition to the new plants, the company has announced with Ireland's National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) that it will create a Centre of Excellence at NIBRT's Dublin facility that will train up to 1,500 bio-processing professionals annually on next-generation biologic manufacturing technologies.

"We are delighted to be investing once again in Ireland, where we have ourselves a long history of manufacturing our own medical imaging products," said Kieran Murphy, chief executive officer of GE Healthcare Life Sciences. "Pharma companies world-wide are racing to respond to patient needs with new life-changing biological medicines, and GE is investing in technology and service solutions, as well as industry skills and expertise, to enable them to make and get their products to market more quickly."

Ireland's Minister for Jobs Mary Mitchell O'Connor commented: "The biopharma industry makes a huge contribution to the Irish economy in terms of jobs and manufacturing exports, and is one of the fastest growing sectors. I am delighted that GE is making a significant investment in Cork. All investment and jobs created has a positive knock on effect on the wider region. Over 28,000 people currently work in biopharma and 6,000 of those work in biologics. This subsector is expected to double in the coming years and will provide both a challenge and an opportunity for the industry and training providers to collaborate on promoting the range of career opportunities available."

GE said its KUBio enables pharma companies to quickly deploy new biologics manufacturing capacity and bring medicines to market faster by being between 25% and 50% cheaper to build than traditional facilities. Build time is estimated at an average of 18 months compared to three years and GE claimed that carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced by 75% and water and energy use by approximately 80%.

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