Auction heralds end of an era At former pharmaceutical site
AT the same time as Britain ramps up its coronavirus vaccine rollout programme amid concerns about how quickly doses can be manufactured, the West’s biggest former pharmaceutical site is being stripped for parts ahead of demolition.
The giant former AstraZeneca Avlon Works, based at Hallen near Avonmouth, will be demolished by a Canadian real estate company and eventually be replaced by a huge logistics and warehousing park.
The entire contents of the massive site are being sold at auction next month, either by individual lot or as a bulk purchase.
It comes as Britain seeks to accelerate its vaccine programme during perhaps the bleakest period of the pandemic, with coronavirus infection rates rocketing and more than 1,000 deaths per day being recorded.
The Prime Minister this week spoke about aiming to carry out two million vaccinations per week, but some commentators have expressed concerns about whether the supply of vaccines from Pfizer and AstraZeneca can match that ambition.
Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, this week told The Times of his frustration that years of neglect by successive governments had left the UK without the capacity to manufacture the vaccine at the pace needed in a pandemic.
He said: “The Government has been completely disinterested in building onshore manufacturing capacity for any of the life-sciences products.”
Peter Piot, head of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has described the fact that the UK entered this pandemic with only one injectable-vaccine factory of any size as a “national security risk”.
And fears that nationalism may interfere with global vaccine rollout were heightened when the Indian government reportedly placed a temporary export block on Indian manufactured doses of the OxfordAstraZeneca vaccine.
The Associated Press reported that the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer – the Serum Institute of India – had been contracted to supply more than one billion doses of the vaccine to developing countries around the world, but the Indian government will not allow exports until it has vaccinated vulnerable populations in India. Britain’s world-class pharmaceutical research sector is not today matched by a similar manufacturing capacity.
It wasn’t always thus.
For more than 50 years the Avlon works at Hallen was at the forefront of British pharmaceutical manufacturing – first under the ownership of chemicals giant ICI, which spun off its Zeneca arm in the 1990s before the merger with Swedish company Astra.
The site is thought to have been the inspiration for the naming of the antiseptic cream Savlon and until recently was manufacturing a number of AstraZeneca drugs, including Accolate, an oral treatment for asthma, Seroquel, a treatment for schizophrenia, and rousvastotin, the main ingredient in cholestrol-busting drug Crestor.
Avlon Works was operational for 50 years from 1969 to 2019. In 2016,
AstraZeneca sold the site to Avara Pharmaceutical in the hope of securing the operation’s future, but Avara fell into administration and the entire site was put up for sale.
Vancouver’s Epta Development Corporation (EDC) bought the 100acre Avlon Works pharmaceutical processing site in December – and is now in the process of selling off all its remaining assets.
Maynards, an industrial auctions and liquidations company, has been appointed to manage the asset recovery and demolition.
The project is so vast, according to Maynards, the asset list runs to 144 pages and the company expects to put together a sales catalogue of more than 5,000 lots, to include “everything above ground”.
Once the site has been cleared, EDC is proposing to create a 1.85 million square foot park – a project that would lead to major economic development, job creation and regeneration for the region, said Maynards.
Among the equipment and facilities to be disposed of are: five largescale API (active pharmaceutical ingredient) plants, with reactors, pressure filter, conical and centrifuge drying, two large-scale milling facilities with Hosakawa mills; four quality, two environmental, six chemistry and one analytical laboratories; a biological wastewater
The Avonmouth site has long been a major national distribution hub for its products, and so is perfectly situated for effective asset disposal
Daniel Gray
treatment facility; a combined heat and power plant and extensive warehousing, including cold storage .
Maynards’ UK managing director Daniel Gray said the spares inventory alone was valued at £2.5 million.
“Add to that site support equipment, site infrastructure, offices, labs, warehouse equipment, workshops, data centres, building structures and much more, and it is easy to see just how substantial and significant this offer is,” he said.
All the equipment has been cleaned and purged, Maynards
said, with Avara Pharmaceuticals staff kept on to assist in answering technical questions, provide data and assist with sales and equipment removal from site.
“The Avonmouth site has long been a major national distribution hub for its products, and so is perfectly situated for effective asset disposal, with additional nearby port connections,” added Mr Gray.
While AstraZeneca and Pfizer have both dismissed suggestions they cannot supply the vaccine fast enough and Oxford Biomedica, the main manufacturer of the “raw” vaccine in the UK for the Oxford/ AstraZeneca jab, has said it is running at full production, there is clear symbolism of such a giant pharmaceutical site being stripped for parts in the middle of a pandemic.
Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock indicated that the amount of vaccine available is the rate-limiting factor in getting people vaccinated.
He told MPs: “The rate-limiting factor is the amount of the actual juice available, the actual vaccine.
“Which is not manufactured like a chemical, it is effectively ... it is a biological product.
“It’s a bit like if you bake your own bread, Madam Deputy Speaker, I don’t know if you do, but I sometimes do, and it is a bit like the creation of and growth of yeast.
It’s probably the best way to think of it, it is a complicated and difficult task and ... that is the rate-limiting factor. I pay tribute to those who are engaged in the manufacturing process.”
Mr Hancock also said that the Government is working with AstraZeneca and Pfizer to increase the supply of Covid-19 vaccines “as fast as possible”.
He said: “The supply of vaccines can take place on all seven days of the week, but in a regular way, we do it in six days of the week and then on the seventh day people can either rest or deliver further vaccine if that’s what’s necessary.
“As a result of this, there has been no point at which somebody in any area has been short of vaccine because of this delivery schedule.
“We have a challenge, which is we need to increase the amount of vaccine available and the current rate-limiting factor on the vaccine rollout is the supply of approved, tested, safe vaccine.
“We are working with both AstraZeneca and Pfizer to increase that supply as fast as possible and they’re doing a brilliant job.”