Swiss pharma giant Roche to invest $50bn in US within five years
Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche plans to invest up to $50 billion (CHF40.5 billion) in the United States over the next five years. Fellow Basel-based pharma company Novartis had already announced investments totalling billions almost a fortnight ago.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
According to a press release issued by Roche on Tuesday, the money is to be invested in both existing sites and new production facilities. The expansion would create up to 12,000 new jobs – around 1,000 at the pharmaceutical company alone and a further 11,000 to support the new US production capacities.
The funds will be channelled into US production and sales capacities for both the pharmaceuticals and diagnostics divisions. A state-of-the-art production facility for gene therapy is planned in Pennsylvania.
+ Novartis announces billion-dollar investment in US
Roche is also planning a new 900,000 square metre manufacturing centre to support its growing portfolio of next-generation weight loss medicines. The location of this centre is yet to be announced.
In addition, Roche will invest in a new research and development centre in Massachusetts to conduct cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence and serve as a hub for new research and development activities in cardiovascular, renal and metabolic areas.
More
Roche’s big bet on big diseases
“The investments announced today emphasise our long-standing commitment to research, development and production in the US,” CEO Thomas Schinecker is quoted as saying in the press release. The Group has been engaged in the US for 110 years as an important driver of jobs, innovation and the creation of intellectual property in both the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in the US.
Once all new and expanded production capacities are operational, Roche will export more medicines from the US than it imports.
Adapted from German by DeepL/jdp
How we work
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate them into English. An editor then briefly reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
Did you find this explanation helpful? Please fill out this short survey to help us understand your needs by clicking hereExternal link.
More
How retiring baby boomers could crash Swiss property market
More
Flat-hunting in Switzerland’s cheapest and most expensive municipalities
More
The world’s strongest currency is also super-competitive
More
The Russia affair in the Swiss secret service: ‘This is espionage’
More
Swiss food labels must declare animal suffering from July
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.