Drugs giant shuts plant in Grimsby

NOVARTIS is closing its Grimsby plant in 2020 – putting about 500 jobs at risk.

The move is part of a global restructuring at the pharmaceutical firm that will also see around 2,000 jobs go in Switzerland and other plants in Japan and the US.

Bosses said the move had nothing to do with Brexit, explaining the business is shifting towards more specialised products ahead of the massmanufactured goods that Grimsby produced.

Novartis and predecessor Ciba have run the plant in Lincolnshire since 1951, starting with anti-bacterial medicines and now making drugs to treat cancer, heart failure and other lifethreatening illnesses.

The site has 395 Novartis employees but contractors are also affected.

Grimsby MP Melanie Onn said: ‘There are 400 families, all of the supply chain and contracting companies that work to support them, and these have been high quality, stable jobs. Having been in the area for nearly 70 years, to have that go is awful.’

Haseeb Ahmad, Novartis’s UK country president, said ‘this has been a very difficult decision’.