Wyeth Building World's Biggest $1 Billion Biopharma Plant In Dublin

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Incorporated; Houston, Texas). A biopharmaceutical plant under construction for Wyeth Medica Ireland (NYSE:WYE)(Madison, New Jersey) is claimed to be the largest biotech plant in the world. With full production operations scheduled for 2005 the plant will cost around $1 billion and will create 1,000 new jobs in the frayed South Dublin area. The plant at Grange Castle will involve the construction of 1.2 million square feet of buildings containing state-of-the art biotech equipment and manufacturing processes.

A range of health care products to be manufactured covers treatments for patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine which is a treatment for the prevention of pneumonia and invasive meningitis in infants and young children and antihaemophilic Factor V111 for patients with haemophilia 'A' formulated in the absence of human serum albumin. These products are currently produced at Wyeth plants around the world.

A recombitant human bone morphogenetic protein is being investigated for use in orthopaedic trauma, oral and maxillofacial surgery and spinal fusion.

The Grange Castle plant will include research and development, a biotechnology substance facility and a biotechnology product facility. The R&D section will co-ordinate and validate technologies and procedures required to bring products and processes from the laboratory to the commercial biotechnology substance facility where the active ingredients will be manufactured and then moved through to the finished product facility where the products are placed into vials for end sale as sterile products. The primary steps of the finishing process are formulation, vial preparation, filling, capping and inspection.

In construction terms, the facility will require 1.25 million man hours of engineering, 7 million man hours of construction, 15,000 tons of structural steel, 160,000 ft of process piping, 2,400 separate items of equipment and 50 different sub-contract packages.

Wyeth has had operations in Ireland since 1974. At Wyeth Nutritionals in county Limerick, a plant manufactures and distributes infant nutritional products and employs 500 people. In county Kildare Wyeth Medica manufactures and distributes pharmaceutical products and employs over 1,000 people and at Fort Dodge Laboratories in Sligo 80 people are employed manufacturing and distributing animal health care products.

The Grange Castle project is being designed and managed by some of the world's leading consulting engineering companies including Jacobs Engineering, Bovis Lend Lease, Project Management and Arup Consulting Engineers.

Contractors working on the site include Roadbridge, Fisher, PJ Hegarty, Mercury Engineering, Suir, HA O'Neill, Cronin and Buckley, SIAC, Prince Cladding, Industrial Logistics, J Sisk and Son, GF May and BCP Engineers.

The project is on schedule.