French pharmaceutical company Servier will invest €184 million and create 267 jobs in Kilkenny and Wicklow.
The Paris-based, privately-owned company will spend €69 million expanding its Arklow, Co Wicklow plant which was established in 1985 and currently employs 206 people in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals for supply to international markets.
The company plans to create 112 new jobs in Arklow over the next five years.
Servier also announced that it will build a new €115 million facility on an IDA Ireland site at Belview in south Kilkenny, about four miles from Waterford city and adjacent to the port of Waterford.
Construction of the plant, which will manufacture pharmaceutical ingredients, is expected to take up to three years. Servier hopes to be ready to lodge a planning application with Kilkenny County Council next spring.
The French group said yesterday that it hoped the plant would employ 155 people within seven years.
Announcing the investment yesterday in Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin told an audience including the Irish and French ambassadors, that Servier's manufacturing facility in Arklow "is thriving and this expansion is a strong indicator of the company's success here to date".
Servier is the 14th largest pharmaceutical company in Europe. It develops cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes and central nervous system drugs. The company employs 17,500 people worldwide and had a turnover in 2004/05 of €2.8 billion.
It invests 25 per cent of its annual turnover in research and development. Two of its existing drugs manufactured in Arklow, the diabetes drug Diamacron and the hypertension drug Coversyl, rank in the top five in Europe in their class.
The Minister described the proposed new facility in Kilkenny as "a significant investment for the southeast" and said he hoped it would to attract "a cluster of cutting-edge multinational pharmaceutical companies" to the region.
Servier said the Kilkenny facility would manufacture "active ingredients for products used in the treatment of osteoporosis, depression, angina and hypertension to supply both the Arklow facility and the parent company in France".
Ange Diaz, the general manager of manufacturing and IT at Servier, revealed that the company had considered siting the new facility in Singapore but had opted for Kilkenny because of the company's "trust" in Ireland.
He said that "the Irish Government, agencies and local support have been good all along".
Mr Diaz said the company was seeking an engineering company to draw up plans for the plant's construction. Several groups have already declined because "they are too busy".
"The cost of construction in Ireland is now significantly more expensive than France which is not in Ireland's favour," he said but added that "if we wanted to go to a cheap country we would not have chosen Ireland".
Servier said about half the new jobs would be for graduates and that the company was confident it "can find the necessary life sciences capabilities and skills we need in Ireland".
