Indian pharma company to create new jobs at Grangemouth

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A pharmaceutical factory at Grangemouth is to expand, following a 拢45m investment.

India-based Piramal Pharma Solutions plans to create up to 50 new jobs in making antibody drugs under contract to other medicine developers.

The move will bring the total number of employees at the site to more than 250.

Scottish Enterprise, which is backing the expansion with 拢2.4m, said the investment was "tremendous news" for Scotland's life sciences sector.

Piramal wants the new building at Grangemouth to improve its ability to develop clinical products rapidly, and to support cancer drug trials.

In the first phase of the site expansion, two new ADC (Antibody-Drug Conjugate) manufacturing suites will be added to the existing three.

'High-quality jobs'

Scottish Enterprise chief executive Adrian Gillespie said: "Piramal's investment is tremendous news for Scotland's life sciences sector, one of the largest life sciences clusters in Europe, and is creating new, high-quality jobs that are crucial to our economic recovery.

"With Scottish Enterprise support, the company's Grangemouth site expansion proposals will deliver more R&D and production capacity for the development, scale-up and commercial manufacture of drugs in the global fight against cancer."

Piramal Pharma chief executive Peter DeYoung said: "This new development will more than double our ADC production capacity, strengthening our ability to service customers throughout the entire drug lifecycle."