Cefuroxime Sodium

GSK is closing down a facility and is winding down antibiotic manufacturing operations at another factory as Novartis’ Sandoz chooses to end its four-year contract. The British drugmaker will close down antibiotic operations at its facility in Ulverston, a town in the North of the UK, in June 2025 and is now “in in-depth discussions with interested parties” over the building, a company spokesperson told Endpoints News. Around 100 staffers will also be let go. The pharma company said it is donating $2 million to Ulverston and is working with “local leaders” to help the community, the company spokesperson added. Along with the Ulverston site, GSK is terminating antibiotic manufacturing at its Barnard Castle location in October 2025, the spokesperson said. While around 200 employees will be laid off there, the majority at Barnard Castle will remain unaffected and the site will continue to make other products, the spokesperson added. Barnard Castle manufactures other GSK products such as inhaled and tropical oral medicines and employs at least 1,100 workers, according to the company’s website. Those closures come with the end of a 2021 deal between GSK and Swiss generics manufacturer Sandoz. Sandoz dished out $500 million to GSK to get the global rights to three of its antibiotics, Zinacef, Fortum and, most notably, Zinnat which is used to treat a variety of infections including in the throat, lungs and ears. As a part of that deal, GSK said it would transfer the technology for the antibiotic manufacturing to Sandoz later on. But the contract was only for four years, which has now elapsed. “In 2021, we said that, in the absence of alternatives, we would close our Cephalosporins manufacturing operations,” the spokesperson explained. Cephalosporins are a type of β-lactam antibiotic used to treat infections.

For the last few years, GSK has been dismantling its underutilized antibiotics plant in Ulverston. It will close the plant in June of next year as a contract to make penicillins for Sandoz expires. With the expiration of a contract to produce antibiotic medicines for Sandoz, GSK will shutter a 75-year-old manufacturing facility in its home country. The U.K. pharma will close its plant in Ulverston in June of next year, terminating the employment of approximately 100. BBC reported the decision over the weekend.The layoffs—including 200 at another GSK manufacturing site in Barnard Castle—were announced in 2021.When Sandoz paid $500 million to acquire the rights to sell GSK’s trio of established cephalosporin antibiotics—Zinnat, Zinacef and Fortum—in more than 100 markets around the world, it said it would eventually take over production of the penicillins. Sandoz’s antibiotics production is centered at its site in Kundil, Austria. With the deal coming during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sandoz was looking to beef up its antibiotics portfolio. It also fit into GSK CEO Emma Walmsley’s strategy to focus on innovative medicines and vaccines and divest other assets. On Monday, GSK confirmed the planned closure of the Ulverston plant. Over the last few years, the company has been dismantling the under-used facility.“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,” a GSK spokesperson wrote in an email. “We understand this has been a difficult and uncertain period for our people at Ulverston. As ever, our first priority is to support them as much as we can.” The GSK spokesperson added that the company is making a 2 million pound sterling ($2.6 million) donation to the community. GSK also is in “in-depth discussions” with parties that are interested in the land at the Ulverston site.There is no plan to close the campus at Barnard Castle, where “the vast majority” of employees are unaffected, the GSK spokesperson said, adding that some of the company’s “most innovative medicines,” are produced at the site.