Merck has withdrawn from a proposed £1bn London pharmaceutical research facility in the latest setback to the government’s growth strategy.
The American pharmaceutical behemoth will make 127 employees redundant whilst scrapping the construction scheme, which was scheduled to launch in King’s Cross during 2027, as reported by City AM.
The company cautioned that Britain would fall behind the remainder of Europe in health research investment unless it enhanced conditions to attract capital.
“Unless a change is made to the operating environment, the undervaluation is corrected, and the investment is put back in the right places, more and more companies will be making these sorts of decisions,” Merck said.
“Simply put, the UK is not internationally competitive.”
Industry losing patience with Labour
The decision mirrors a comparable move by Cambridge-headquartered pharmaceutical company Astrazeneca earlier this year, after it abandoned a £450m scheme to expand its vaccine manufacturing capabilities in the UK.
Subsequently, Astrazeneca announced it would commit $50bn to manufacturing and R&D in the US, stating that the decision “underpins our belief in America’s innovation in biopharmaceuticals.”
The FTSE 100 member is also believed to have been weighing up relocating its primary listing from London to New York, a shift which would deliver another blow to the UK. Merck, known as MSD in the UK, first revealed plans for the new King’s Cross facility in 2017 as part of a new UK headquarters, with construction set to begin in 2023.
It was anticipated that dozens more scientists would be recruited prior to the centre’s inauguration.
Labour pledged to make growth a key focus of its mission after taking office last year, but has since faced a series of plant shutdowns and thousands of redundancies nationwide.
This includes the closure of a biodiesel plant in Lincolnshire, owned by Trafigura, in February, as well as a nearby bioethanol plant owned by ABF. A chemical plant in Teesside also shut down, resulting in hundreds of job losses, while the Lindsey oil refinery fell into insolvency.
Just last week, former Darktrace chief Poppy Gustafsson stepped down as the UK’s investment minister after only a year in the role, indicating that the government’s attempts to attract inward investment were not being well received.
