Exton’s West Pharmaceutical Services Plans 150-Job Expansion In Ireland

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Waterford, Ireland, a southeastern Irish city built by Vikings and long famous for Waterford crystal, will soon have at least 150 new manufacturing jobs for workers who will produce packaging components for insulin injector cartridges.

West Pharmaceutical Services of Exton announced plans to expand its global manufacturing operations in Waterford.  The new facility will also produce other packaging components for West’s growing pharmaceutical and biotech business.

Donald E. Morel, Jr.
Donald E. Morel, Jr.

“With diabetes emerging as one of the fastest growing diseases globally, our pharmaceutical customers are expanding their production lines for injectable insulin,” said Donald E. Morel Jr., West’s chairman and CEO.  “In the future, we intend for this site to be a center of excellence for advanced packaging components to meet the needs of our customer base for a range of sophisticated injectable therapies.”

Morel said Waterford has a business-friendly environment.  Construction will begin in early 2015 on a 44-acre site. West said the  site will be a center of excellence for its proprietary elastomeric sheeting, used to package insulin for pen injectors.

If West does also expand its injectable component product lines there, the plant eventually could employ 250 to 300 people and mean an investment in the range of €100 million.  Initially, the expansion will employ 100 construction workers.

West worked with the Irish minister for jobs, enterprise and innovation on the project.

“The IDA and its local stakeholders have fought off stiff competition to have this plant located in Ireland,” said Martin Shanahan, CEO at IDA Ireland. “This project is a vote of confidence in the people of Waterford.”

West’s manufacturing and development center is in Dublin, and is the European headquarters for The Tech Group, a West subsidiary.  The site employs over 230 people and is expanding.

West supports its customers from sales, manufacturing, customer support and research and development locations in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Established in 1923, West had 2013 sales totaling $1.4 billion.

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Top image courtesy of Irish Business.

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