As Ire­land con­tin­ues to see more in­vest­ments and build­ing projects from phar­ma com­pa­nies, an­oth­er con­tender is look­ing to place more in­vest­ment in the Emer­ald Isle.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port from The Irish Times on Fri­day, Ab­bott Lab­o­ra­to­ries is in­vest­ing €440 mil­lion, or about $451 mil­lion, to build a new man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Kilken­ny, lo­cat­ed in the coun­try’s south­east, to make more of its glu­cose mon­i­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to an Ab­bott spokesper­son in an email to End­points News, the com­pa­ny an­tic­i­pates that more than 800 peo­ple will be em­ployed at the Kilken­ny fa­cil­i­ty once it opens, and the re­main­der will be em­ployed at its site in Done­gal.

“Done­gal is a key man­u­fac­tur­ing site for Ab­bott’s di­a­betes care busi­ness, and we have in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in ex­pand­ing our op­er­a­tions there over the last four years. We’re in­creas­ing our cap­i­tal in­vest­ment in Done­gal in­clud­ing fa­cil­i­ties, pro­duc­tion equip­ment and adding peo­ple to en­able Done­gal to bet­ter sup­port our prod­ucts glob­al­ly,” the Ab­bott spokesper­son said.

For the new 250,000 square-foot build­ing in Kilken­ny, the com­pa­ny will start re­cruit­ment im­me­di­ate­ly for po­si­tions in en­gi­neer­ing, qual­i­ty con­trol and med­ical de­vice man­u­fac­tur­ing, among oth­ers. The site, which the com­pa­ny hopes to have on­line by 2024, will be re­spon­si­ble for the man­u­fac­ture of its Freestyle Li­bre 3 sys­tem for con­tin­u­ous glu­cose mon­i­tor­ing. And the com­pa­ny is bull­ish that it can find the tal­ent.

“The new lo­ca­tion of Kilken­ny is at­trac­tive to our fu­ture em­ploy­ees as the re­gion has strong ed­u­ca­tion­al links with the South-East Tech­no­log­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty, en­abling us to at­tract grad­u­ates from its Wa­ter­ford and Car­low cam­pus­es,” the spokesper­son said.

Ab­bot has had a heavy pres­ence in Ire­land for over 75 years and cur­rent­ly em­ploys more than 5,000 peo­ple across nine sites. How­ev­er, Ab­bott’s fur­ther com­mit­ment comes at a time when sev­er­al oth­er ma­jor phar­mas are look­ing to snap up Irish soil for man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Mer­ck KGaA, Alex­ion, Eli Lil­ly and SK have all an­nounced ei­ther new ma­jor mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar sites or ex­pan­sion projects across the coun­try this year, and the news from Ab­bott shows that the speed of man­u­fac­tur­ing de­vel­op­ment isn’t slow­ing down.

The EMA is putting EU member states on alert over the shortage of two drugs that counter heart attacks due to an uptick in demand.

On Friday, the EMA sent out a warning that two Boehringer Ingelheim drugs are experiencing a shortage: Actilyse and Metalyse. The drugs are used as emergency treatments for adults experiencing acute myocardial infarction, or a heart attack, by dissolving blood clots that have formed in the blood vessels.

Fujifilm’s CDMO arm, Fujifilm Diosynth, has been on a roll this month as the company has recently broken ground on a major project in Europe and it appears to be keeping up the momentum.

Fujifilm Diosynth announced that it has kicked off an expansion project for its microbial manufacturing facility at its campus in the town of Billingham, UK, in the northeast of England.

The 20,000 square-foot, £400 million ($435 million) expansion will add clean rooms, purification suites and a packing area along with more space for the manufacturing itself.

Back in April, Amgen said it was encouraged by the solicitor general’s anticipated review of its Supreme Court petition to rehear a Repatha patent case. They’re likely much less optimistic about the outcome now.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a recent 27-page brief that Amgen’s arguments “lack merit and further review is not warranted.”

The case traces back to a suit filed in 2014 against Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, which ended up beating Amgen’s PCSK9 blockbuster Repatha to market by a month just a year later.