GSK to Invest £275m in British Manufacturing Sites : GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is to boost medicine production in the UK with a £275 million investment at three of its British manufacturing sites.

The funding will increase production and support the delivery of its latest respiratory and large molecule biological medicines. GSK has said that the majority of these products will be exported to global markets.

The UK drug manufacturer will invest in its facilities at Ware, Hertfordshire; Montrose, Scotland; and Barnard Castle, County Durham.

GSK Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Witty, said that the announcement reflects the further investment to support the company’s pharmaceutical pipeline and will meet the rising demand for the group’s innovative portfolio of newly launched products.

Witty added: It is testament to our skilled UK workforce and the country’s leading position in life sciences that we are making these investments in advanced manufacturing here.

From their manufacture in the UK, many of these medicines will be sent to patients around the world.

The company will invest £92 million at the Barnard Castle facility which employs over 1,000 staff on the construction of an aseptic sterile facility that will support the manufacture of existing and new biopharmaceutical assets.

Every day, the facility supplies almost half a million packs of pharmaceutical products to 140 global markets.

The Montrose site in Angus employs over 450 staff and is where GSK makes active ingredients for HIV, respiratory and vaccine products. Here, the company is set to invest around £110 million to provide a new, state of the art site for the manufacture of respiratory active ingredients.

The Ware site employs 1,200 people and will be given a £74 million investment to support the further expansion of the firm’s new Ellipta respiratory inhaler through extra manufacturing capacity at the site.

Along with jobs associates with the construction of the new facilities, GSK says that the investment will support the existing employees at the three sites and will result in the creation of more jobs.