The Swiss group Novartis will invest 77.4 million euros this year in expanding its production capacity in Spain, of which 63 million will go to the Palafolls plant in Barcelona: this factory will increase its capacity by 150%, up to 500 tons annually, and will become one of the group's two antibiotic production hubs for the whole of Europe.
The president of Novartis Spain, Jesús Ponce, and the global president of the innovative medicines division, Marie France Tschudin, yesterday presented the group's projects to the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, and the Secretary General of Economic Affairs of the Presidency of the Government Manuel de la Rocha. In addition to the investment in Palafolls, which will be made by its generics subsidiary Sandoz, the group will invest 12.9 million euros in Castellanos de Moriscos (Salamanca) through its subsidiary AAA, to produce radioligands, personalized medicines that are used in treatments oncological. The same subsidiary will invest another 1.5 million in expanding its plant in Almunia de Doña Godina (Zaragoza).
The group's investments will make it possible to create another 124 jobs in Spain: 84 in Palafolls, 20 in Salamanca and another 20 at the Zaragoza plant.
Tschudin defended before the minister and the person in charge of the economy of La Moncloa the need to establish ways of collaboration between companies and public health systems to improve health care and guarantee patient access to the most innovative treatments, something that his judgment "is a complex challenge that cannot be resolved by any organization independently." Tschudin stressed that Novartis will apply itself especially to finding these collaboration formulas with health systems in the field of cardiovascular disease, which is the one with the highest prevalence and mortality.
