AstraZeneca pauses expansion
London — British drug giant AstraZeneca has paused a planned £200 million ($2.7 million) expansion of its research site in Cambridge, the company said.
It comes after the pharmaceutical firm abandoned plans to invest £450 million in a vaccine plant in Merseyside earlier this year in a blow to the government as it seeks to stress its commitment to growing the economy and making the country more attractive to international investors.
An AstraZeneca spokesperson said on Friday: “We constantly reassess the investment needs of our company and can confirm our expansion in Cambridge is paused.
“We have no further comment to make.”
In February, AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot said he was “very disappointed” in the move to scrap the Merseyside site but that the company “couldn’t make the investment economically viable”.
Soriot denied any rift with the Government over the decision and said Labour had failed to match the previous government’s offer of support.
The cancelling of the plant reversed an announcement made by then-chancellor Jeremy Hunt at last year’s March budget that would have seen the pharmaceutical company expand its existing facility in Speke.
Last month, AstraZeneca announced plans to invest $50 billion in the US over the next five years amid the looming threat of US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
The firm said the investment will fund a new “state-of-the-art” manufacturing facility in Virginia – set to be its largest single manufacturing investment in the world.
It will also expand research and development (R&D) and cell therapy manufacturing in Maryland, Massachusetts, California, Indiana and Texas.
©2025 dpa GmbH. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Notes from APS Radio News
In May 2024, the Associated Press reported that AstraZeneca “pulled” from the European market its version of the covid vaccine:
London (AP) — The pharma giant AstraZeneca has requested that the European authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine be pulled, according to the EU medicines regulator.
In an update on the European Medicines Agency’s website Wednesday, the regulator said that the approval for AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria had been withdrawn “at the request of the marketing authorization holder.”
AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine was first given the nod by the EMA in January 2021. Within weeks, however, concerns grew about the vaccine’s safety, when dozens of countries suspended the vaccine’s use after unusual but rare blood clots were detected in a small number of immunized people. The EU regulator concluded AstraZeneca’s shot didn’t raise the overall risk of clots, but doubts remained.
As well, during the early months of 2021, only a few months after the mRNA vaccine had been introduced in the US and elsewhere, a number of European countries prohibited the use of AstraZeneca’s and Moderna’s versions of the covid vaccine, having cited concerns about blood clots (Agence France Presse).
