28th March 2023

Life Sciences Firms Secure £277M of Investment

Four life sciences companies from across the UK will benefit from the first tranche of Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund (LSIMF) grants in a move which is set to support more than 500 jobs. The firms are based in the Liverpool City Region, North Wales, London and Northern Ireland.

Government funding of £17m is supported by additional private investment of £260m.

Pharmaron will receive a £151m investment in capital and people to substantially grow its operations in Liverpool, increasing production capacity four-fold for critical gene therapy and vaccine components and creating 174 jobs, while also safeguarding a further 156.

In North Wales, Ipsen has secured a £75m investment to grow the manufacture of innovative medicines for neurological conditions, creating 39 new jobs and safeguarding a further 37 at its Wrexham facility.

Touchlight, based in Hampton, London, has secured £14m of investment which will create 17 jobs and protect a further six and boost UK health resilience by establishing the commercial scale manufacture of DNA.

Finally, Randox has been awarded a £36m investment to modernise the manufacture of antibodies used across diagnostic tests. A new facility in Crumlin, Northern Ireland, will create 90 new jobs.

Research and innovation minister George Freeman said: “The UK’s £94bn life science sector provides over 250,000 high skill jobs across the UK from drug discovery to diagnostics, medtech devices and digital health.

“The industry is being transformed by the pace of change: from AI to genomics, bio manufacturing to smart stents and personalised immunotherapies, technologies are converging to create a new era of advanced digital products.

“That requires new types of advances manufacturing plant which is why we set up the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund, which today’s news shows is working: converting £17m grants to four companies into £260m industrial investment.”

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt added: “The UK is home to Europe’s largest life science sector – it’s a real British success story which includes the first Covid vaccine that saved millions of lives.

“We want to cement Britain’s competitive advantage by backing more innovative projects to develop, manufacture and export those treatments of the future.”