AstraZeneca’s top leadership has blamed the UK’s “discouraging” tax rate for the company’s decision to build a €374M Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient facility at the former Alexion campus in Dublin rather than near its existing sites around Macclesfield, Cheshire.

Speaking on a conference call on 9 February, CEO Pascal Soriot said that despite the UK government’s desire to transform the country into a life sciences powerhouse, punitive tax rates are forcing decision-makers to look elsewhere, Fierce Pharma reported.

“We've made a €374M investment in the state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, which we wanted to make in this country [the UK], and we've made in Ireland because the tax rate was discouraging,” Soriot said. “We’re very committed [to the UK], but we need to see also supporting policies for the whole industry.”

AstraZeneca had been warning the UK authorities for some time not to take the country's life sciences sector for granted, and predicted the country would lose out on investment to more competitive nations.

AstraZeneca unveiled plans for the Dublin facility in September 2021 with what was then a €337M price tag for construction of an API facility for small molecules. The site will also help the UK-based pharmaceutical giant’s global manufacturing network in late-stage development and supply early commercial supplies for medicines.

Soriot said Ireland’s commitment to developing more green energy in the coming years played a role in the company’s decision. He also said that if the UK government wants to attract more investment, it needs to improve the environment for life sciences.

“If we want a flourishing life sciences sector, we need more than discovery science,” he said. “It’s all very nice to discover something in the lab, but at some point you need other types of people to progress the project. Unfortunately, we're not in an environment where we see that happen. What we see is price reductions that are really, really very large and disincentivise companies.”

UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt responded that he backs a lower-cost environment for development companies.

“We’re disappointed that we lost out this time, and we agree with the fundamental case they’re making, which is that we need our business taxation to be more competitive and we want to bring business taxes down,” Hunt told reporters.