AstraZeneca has outlined plans to invest £650 million in the UK.
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AstraZeneca intends to invest £450 million at their manufacturing site in Speke, Liverpool for the research, development, and manufacture of vaccines – building on the site’s current role in supplying the world leading childhood vaccination programme.
The new facility will be designed and built to be operationally net zero with power supplied from renewable energy sources.
In a further boost for the UK’s resilience for future pandemics and global health threats, AstraZeneca and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) plan to work in partnership to advance science for developing and evaluating vaccines – using technology from both AstraZeneca’s manufacturing site in Speke and the UKHSA’s Vaccine Development Evaluation Centre (VDEC) at their Porton Down site.
AstraZeneca will also expand its presence at Europe’s largest life sciences cluster in Cambridge with £200 million in investment.
The facility will house around 1,000 employees and will be adjacent to its £1.1 billion global R&D Discovery Centre (DISC), which already hosts 2,300 researchers and scientists.
These jobs will provide opportunities for people looking to get the skills they need to succeed in life and – with cuts to National Insurance – enjoy more money in their pocket as a result of their hard work.
To drive investment and growth, the UK Government has delivered one of the most competitive business tax regimes of any major economy – sticking to an economic plan to build a stronger economy where hard work is rewarded, and ambition and aspiration are celebrated.
Full expensing is one of the biggest business tax cuts in modern British history, giving the UK the most generous regime for capital allowances in the G7 and joint most generous in the OECD.
The company will also open a new manufacturing facility for one of its cancer medicines in Macclesfield later this year, following the announcement of a £380 million investment in 2021. ■