GSK to close Cumbrian factory after 75 years

GSK is preparing to close a 75-year-old factory amid continued uncertainty over the future of the land.
Staff working at the plant in Ulverston, Cumbria, once one of the world’s largest biopharmaceuticals sites, have been updated by the company on the timetable to end operations, three and a half years after the future of the facility was thrown into doubt.
In February 2021, GSK agreed to sell its cephalosporin antibiotics business to Sandoz, a former division of Novartis, of Switzerland, for up to $500 million, with production to transfer to Austria in four years’ time.
The decision prompted a backlash from local MPs, including against Dame Emma Walmsley, GSK’s chief executive, who was born in nearby Barrow-in-Furness and was a member of the Conservative government’s Build Back Better Council.
The plans were particularly contentious as the company had announced taxpayer-backed investment plans in 2012 to build its first new manufacturing facility in Britain for almost 40 years on the Ulverston site. The plant was part of a £500 million UK investment programme that GSK had said would create up to a thousand jobs. The plans were scrapped in July 2017, a few months after Walmsley, 55, became chief executive.
Boris Johnson intervened in 2021, when he was prime minister, and pledged to “explore ways that the government can help” to get Lakes BioScience, a start-up company of senior former GSK employees from the Ulverston site, off the ground. The £350 million project, backed by Star Capital, a private equity firm based in London, failed to progress.
GSK, one of Britain’s two Big Pharma companies, said it continued to “actively explore alternative options for the land at Ulverston” and was holding “in-depth discussions with interested parties”.
Explaining the decision to close the plant in June, GSK said: “In 2021 we said that, in the absence of alternatives, we would close our cephalosporins manufacturing operations, including our site at Ulverston, once our contract manufacturing agreement with Sandoz ended in 2025. As Sandoz has not chosen to extend this agreement, we have updated colleagues at Ulverston to let them know that we currently anticipate operations at the site will conclude in June next year.”
It understood “this has been a difficult and uncertain period for our people at Ulverston” and said it was working with local leaders, including on a £2 million donation to invest in the local community. “We remain extremely proud of GSK Ulverston’s record of delivering medicines to around two billion patients across the world over its 75-year history.”
The site was once one of the area’s largest private sector employers, employing more than 2,000 people, but by 2021 that number had shrunk to about 130.
Last year GSK opened a new facility at its manufacturing site in Ware, Hertfordshire, after about £65 million of investment, including to make HIV medicines. It is also conducting a £67 million upgrade of its factory in Montrose, eastern Scotland.