LONDON (Reuters) -AstraZeneca will no longer invest 450 million pounds ($558.3 million) at its vaccine manufacturing plant in northern England, the company said on Friday, citing a reduction in government support.
The decision to ditch the development of an existing facility in the Speke area of Liverpool comes at a time when Prime Minister Keir Starmer is pushing hard to drum up investment in Britain to generate economic growth.
“Following discussions with the current government, we are no longer pursuing our planned investment at Speke,” an AstraZeneca spokesperson said in a statement.
“Several factors have influenced this decision, including the timing and reduction of the final offer compared to the previous government’s proposal.”
Earlier this week finance minister Rachel Reeves named AstraZeneca as one of the “great companies” she said were delivering jobs and investment across the country.
Her speech, focused on how to get the country’s stagnant economy growing again, set out the importance of attracting investment and said the government was “determined to make Britain the best place in the world to invest”.
The AstraZeneca spokesperson said the Liverpool site would continue to produce flu vaccines.
The government’s Treasury department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the company’s decision.
The Financial Times reported in August 2024 that AstraZeneca had warned it could relocate its vaccine manufacturing site from Britain to the United States as talks with the Labour government over state aid had become deadlocked.
The newspaper said Reeves wanted to reduce state provisions to the company’s vaccine centre, which would cut the pledge made by the previous administration from about 90 million pounds to 40 million pounds.
The previous government’s offer included up to 70 million in grants to develop the facility in Speke, the FT report said.
($1 = 0.8060 pounds)
(Reporting by Maggie Fick in London, Yamini Kalia in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Muvija M, writing by William James; Editing by Kate Holton and Jan Harvey)
