General Electric (GE) is to create up to 500 jobs by investing €150 million in a biopharmaceutical manufacturing campus at Loughbeg, Ringaskiddy, Cork. GE BioPark Cork will feature Europe’s first KUBio™, prefabricated, off-the-shelf bio-manufacturing facilities that will serve as focal point for further investment in next-generation biopharmaceutical manufacturing in Ireland. It is expected to house more than 500 new jobs when fully operational; 400 with biopharma companies and a further 100 employed directly by GE. The construction phase is expected to begin by mid-2017 and will create up to 800 construction jobs. “Pharma companies world-wide are racing to respond to patient needs with new life-changing biological medicines and GE is investing in technology and service solutions, as well as industry skills and expertise, to enable them to make and get their products to market more quickly. We are delighted to be investing once again in Ireland, where we have ourselves a long history of manufacturing our own medical imaging products,” said Kieran Murphy, CEO, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, GE Healthcare. To further develop biopharma manufacturing skills and expertise in Ireland, GE and the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) also announced a plan to create a NIBRT-GE single-use centre of excellence at NIBRT’s Dublin facility. NIBRT expects to train up to 1,500 bioprocessing professionals annually on next-generation biologic manufacturing technologies. These exceptional technologies for biopharma manufacturing will be used in GE BioPark Cork’s manufacturing facilities. GE BioPark Cork will be a GE-managed campus including four fully-equipped KUBio factories owned by independent biopharma companies manufacturing proprietary medicines, with GE running centralised shared utilities and site services. Patient demand for innovative medicines is driving rapid global growth of the biopharmaceutical industry, resulting in significant need for more production capacity. “NIBRT is delighted to partner with GE on the next generation of bioprocessing equipment, which will accelerate the introduction of these new technologies to the biopharmaceutical manufacturing industry, helping to reduce manufacturing costs and increase the access to these valuable therapies,” said Dominic Carolan, CEO, NIBRT.