A-Z’s Macclesfield investment under threat

AstraZeneca may be about to reverse its plans for fresh investment in Macclesfield – building a drug production plant in Ireland instead – after a dispute with the Government.

The row is thought to have been triggered by the decision to order booster Covid jabs from rival, Pfizer.

According to some reports, Chief executive Pascal Soriot ‘threw his toys out of the pram’ after the decision.

Ministers were offering up to £55 million of subsidies for A-Z for the Macclesfield project before the rift.

It’s being stated that Soriot was so incensed by the booster vaccine snub he reverted to his original plan to build a manufacturing plant in Ireland, which offers more favourable tax breaks.

However, the decision could be reversed. A-Z previously spent £ millions attempting to move production of its highly successful Nolvadex anti-cancer drug overseas – but consistently failed to achieve the extremely high standards of the Macclesfield plant.

In May construction began in Macclesfield on a sterile production plant for a cancer drug, which is used to treat patients with prostate, breast and gynaecological disorders.

Work is set to be completed by the end of next year.

A-Z teamed up with Oxford University to create the Covid jabs, and began work on a booster vaccine over the summer. But its jab was focused on the Beta variant, which first emerged in South Africa, which has been less prevalent in recent months, as Delta has taken hold.

The company is not selling its Covid vaccine at a profit, an unprecedented move by a multinational business. This prompted the World Health Organisation to hail the jab as a ‘vaccine for the world’. 

Critics in the EU have rounded on A-Z over supply chain problems and blamed it for the bloc’s handling of the vaccination programme.