ZURICH - Pharmaceutical company Roche said it plans on cutting 1,000 jobs by closing a plant in Nutley, New Jersey. This move will be in an attempt to reduce development costs of drugs.
“The overall number of clinical development programs has grown substantially,” said Roche CEO, Severin Schwan, in a statement Tuesday.
“The planned consolidation of our research and development organization of initial and re-centralization of research and development activities in Switzerland and Germany, require us to look for resources we can invest in promising clinical programs, while also increasing our overall efficiency,” said the executive.
The initiative allows Roche to maintain its expenditure on research and development of medicines that are almost unchanged despite an increase in clinical research projects in the past 18 months, said Schwan. Roche confirmed this in the financial outlook for 2012.
In conjunction with the measure, Roche said Jean-Jacques Garaud, chief of pharmaceutical research, will leave the company later this week. He will be replaced by Mike Burgess, head of cancer drugs. Roche did not specify the reason for the management changes, and the secretary of Garaud said the executive was traveling Tuesday and could not comment.
The company said it is looking for a place to establish a testing center and drug development. Their new center is expected to generate at least 240 jobs.
