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 Sandoz. The Swiss generics manufacturer 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.