AstraZeneca revives £300m UK investment after pausing major projects

Britain’s biggest drugmaker has restarted a stalled Cambridge expansion and committed fresh spending at Macclesfield, in a reversal after last year’s decision to halt major UK projects

AstraZeneca is to invest £300 million in the UK after reversing course on major projects it had previously put on hold.

The drugmaker said it would restart a paused £200 million expansion in Cambridge and spend a further £100 million at its Macclesfield site, marking a significant shift after pulling back from large-scale UK investment last year.

The Cambridge scheme had been frozen in September, while plans for a £450 million vaccine manufacturing investment at Speke in Merseyside were scrapped in January after the company said government support had been reduced following months of talks.

The latest move will see AstraZeneca complete construction of an office building on its Cambridge campus near its headquarters. Known as the Disc, it is named after Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray crystallography work was central to uncovering the structure of DNA.

At Macclesfield, the company plans to build what chief executive Pascal Soriot described as a “lab of the future”, using digital and data tools to support drug development.

The investment was announced in the Commons by Keir Starmer, who said it would help protect jobs. AstraZeneca said the Macclesfield project would create new scientific roles, although it had not said how many.

The company employs about 10,000 people in the UK, including more than 4,000 in Cambridge and a similar number in Macclesfield.

Soriot said the company was responding to signs of improvement in the UK environment for medicines. He thanked the government “for their effort to improve access for patients, including four new [drug] approvals since the beginning of the year, and we look forward to further enhancing the access and the reimbursement environment and build a strong life sciences sector”.

The announcement follows a period of tension between AstraZeneca and the government over the UK’s attractiveness for pharmaceutical investment, including concerns about NHS uptake of new medicines and pricing.

The UK agreed a deal with the U.S in December on drug pricing that is expected to lower prescription medicine prices in America while increasing NHS spending on medicines. In return, UK pharmaceutical companies are to be spared trade tariffs.

READ MORE: BP profits more than double as oil price surge lifts trading business. The energy giant reported first-quarter profits of $3.2 billion after sharp swings in crude prices during the Iran conflict boosted returns from oil trading.

Do you have news to share or expertise to contribute? The European welcomes insights from business leaders and sector specialists. Get in touch with our editorial team to find out more.

_{Main image: AstraZeneca’s headquarters in Cambridge, where the drugmaker is reviving a paused expansion project. Credit: FDV / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0}