Pfizer cuts 100 Irish staff as sales of Covid medicine collapse

Pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer is cutting 100 jobs at its Newbridge plant in Co Kildare as part of a global response to the collapse in sales of its Paxlovid Covid antiviral medicine. Staff at the plant, where around 1,200 people are currently employed, were given the news on Tuesday afternoon.

However, the company also announced that it was adding 230 new jobs to two other Irish plants – Grange Castle in Dublin and Ringaskiddy in Co Cork. The Grange Castle jobs are understood to be in addition to the 400-500 jobs over five years announced last December as part of a $1 billion investment to expand that plant.

Pfizer dramatically lowered sales forecasts for both its Covid vaccine and its antiviral Paxlovid last month in advance of its third-quarter results. Vaccine sales are now expected to be 15 per cent weaker than previously projected this year, while the company has marked expected antiviral sales down to just $1 billion from $8 billion, in large part due to stock being returned by the US government.

The lower sales of Covid-related medications were blamed for all of a $9 billion – or 13 per cent – downgrade in predicted group-wide revenues for 2023. At that time the group announced that it would embark on a cost-cutting programme to save $3.5 billion (€3.3bn) in annual sales.

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In third-quarter results announced last week sales came in even below analysts’ lowered expectations, falling 42 per cent to $13.2 billion. The company recorded a loss of 17 US cent a share on an adjusted basis, its first by that metric in more than three decades, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Sales of its Covid booster vaccine fell 70 per cent to $1.31 billion, around $200 million short of analysts’ expectations, while Paxlovid sales slumped 97 per cent to $202 million, missing the mark by nearly $170 million.

Newbridge and Ringaskiddy are both heavily involved in the production of Paxlovid. The Cork plant makes the active ingredient for the medicine which is made into tablet form in Newbridge and other finishing plants across Europe.

The company noted that it had expanded operations at Newbridge to meet the demands of the pandemic “but, considering the lower-than-expected utilisation for our Covid-19 products, production is now scaling down in line with customer demand”.

“Pfizer regularly evaluates its manufacturing network to ensure capacity is effectively utilised based on product demands,” a spokeswoman said. “We can confirm planned changes at the Newbridge site which will impact approximately 100 colleagues who work on the manufacture of Pfizer’s Covid antiviral treatment. We will be engaging with our colleagues and their representatives as applicable in relation to the planned changes.”

Newbridge produces a range of other tablets for Pfizer and is the lead manufacturing site for the group’s top atrial fibrillation medicine.

It is expected that more jobs at Pfizer’s Irish operation will go over the coming weeks outside of its manufacturing business. However, the dominance of manufacturing in the US group’s Irish operations and the wide portfolio of medicines it manufactures here are seen as insulating it from the worst of the global cuts, with the company spokeswoman saying it expected to see “overall growth in our manufacturing operations through 2024″.

Pfizer announced earlier this week that it was cutting 200 Covid-related jobs from one of its largest manufacturing plants in Kalmazoo, Michigan, where it makes both the vaccine and the antiviral therapies. Just months earlier it had been talking about adding hundreds of additional jobs at the site.

Last week it announced the closure of a separate plant in New Jersey next year, but said that it hoped to relocate the majority of its 790 staff to a New York factory. The group has also announced the closure of two units in North Carolina overt the past 10 days.