The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, yesterday officially opened a new €1.6 billion production campus for US pharmaceutical giant Wyeth at Grange Castle, Clondalkin, Dublin. The opening of the Wyeth BioPharma Campus was also attended by Wyeth chief executive Robert Essner. The plant will employ 1,000 people, bringing Wyeth’s workforce in Ireland to 3,000. Mr Ahern said the campus would showcase Ireland as leader in the international biopharma industry.

When Bob Essner took over the helm at Wyeth in 2001, the company was weighed down by litigation relating to diet drugs. It was also struggling with what was seen as an aging portfolio of drugs and an unspectacular product pipeline

From an Irish perspective, Wyeth - or American Home Products as it was then known - was synonymous with infant formula and animal health. Since its arrival in 1974, it had been a steady rather than spectacular performer.

It's a long way from the leading-edge operation that this week formally opened a state-of-the-art biotech plant at Grange Castle in Dublin.

"It has come a long way but that is probably also a reflection of how our company has changed," says Essner, chairman, chief executive and president of the US-based group. "Twenty or 15 years ago, we were a strong company and did very well financially, but probably were not at the cutting edge of science.

"It is interesting that now as Wyeth has moved into a leadership position in biotech, vaccines and more typical prescription drug development, Ireland has moved up scale with us. So it's been good for both of us."

Wyeth's €1.6 billion investment is the largest in the history of the company and the second-largest single investment in Ireland behind Intel.

"It represents one of the largest biotech manufacturing facilities in the world and it is important to us because it will supply Europe and other parts of the world with three of our most important products," says Essner.

Grange Castle is a tribute to the success of Essner's determination to make Wyeth a highly focused and innovative pharmaceuticals business.

The man at the helm of the top 10 ranked global pharma group is an industry veteran. He joined Wyeth in 1989 after 13 years with Sandoz Pharmaceuticals and has risen through a variety of roles on the pharma side of operations.

Innovation is his watchword and it features prominently in every briefing the team he has assembled gives to lead Wyeth's development programmes. Essner sees his strength as channelling science into innovative and commercially viable drugs rather than as an end in itself.

Among the products of that system is Enbrel, a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, which has also been licensed recently as a therapy for psoriasis.

Enbrel has become a blockbuster. In second-quarter results, released in July, the company reported a 45 per cent rise in sales in the US and a 75 per cent increase elsewhere. In total, the drug was responsible for more than €900 million in group sales and was a key driver of profitability.

The increased production capacity provided by Grange Castle is seen as critical in capitalising on the potential of the drug. Those same results stated that initial production at the Dublin plant was better than expected.

Grange Castle will also produce Prevnar, a vaccine to prevent pneumococcal disease in children, and Tygacil, a powerful injectable antibiotic which is seen as a treatment for the spate of serious hospital-based bacterial infections resistant to existing drugs.

At the outset, Grange Castle will be predominantly a manufacturing operation, employing 1,200. However, the company has established research links with DCU in a four-year project designed to improve yields from biotech harvesting.

"It is likely over time that this facility will do more development as well as manufacturing because it is an integral part of biotech manufacturing," says Essner.

He also welcomes the recent Government announcement to establish a €70 million biotech research and training centre.

"It is really important because these facilities are not what most people think of as factories. They are very sophisticated processes run by scientists and very well trained technicians. Having trained individuals who can deal with manufacturing using living organisms is essential to success.

"This plant cannot be successful in a vacuum."

Essner acknowledges the efforts of Government agencies in encouraging Wyeth and others to establish operations in Ireland.

"They have done a very good job with us. Ireland has become a very important part of our company. We have 3,000 people in several major facilities in Ireland.

"The Government has done a good job in giving us an environment where we feel welcome, where the help in training qualified people has been forthcoming and the economic situation has been good for us. So we see Ireland as an important part of our future and the Government has been overall very helpful in helping us achieve that."

Despite fears about the supply of adequately trained graduates for the technology and pharmaceutical sectors, the Wyeth chairman says the company has had little problem in staffing up the Grange Castle plant.

"We have been successful so far in recruiting what we need," says Essner, noting that the workforce includes up to 100 Irish scientists who have chosen to returnfrom the US.

Over the past five years, Wyeth has put 12 products a year into development, three times the number before Essner took over and well ahead of industry rivals.

Essner is on record as saying he aims to bring two innovative pharmaceutical applications to market each year, starting in 2006. "We have now had one major drug, Tygacil, approved in the US this summer. We have filed for another major approval in May for Librel," he says.

"Over next year or 18 months, we expect to file for another five or six major applications, so we're feeling better than ever about our ability to bring new drugs to market. You never know until the product gets on the market and is successful, but we're hitting all our milestones."

At a time when regulators are becoming more demanding and the political environment for the pharma sector less welcoming following a series of high-profile withdrawals of previously approved drugs, Essner acknowledges that drug development is growing more challenging.

"It probably is more difficult because, frankly, the easy targets have been mined so now we are looking into diseases where there are not good therapies like Alzheimer's or muscular dystrophy.

"We think we have some great ideas, but it is riskier going at targets that no one has been successful with in the past than it is going against the areas where people know you can and have developed good drugs," says Essner. "On the other hand, the rewards of doing that are commensurately great."

As to the future, Essner says Wyeth's success will lie in a two-pronged approach - continuing to bring innovative products to market and improving efficiency in an effort to contain costs that worry customers, whether they are governments or private groups.

On drug development, he is bullish about a joint venture with Irish drug company Elan that is trying to develop a treatment for Alzheimer's disease.

"That partnership has produced what are the most promising potential therapies for Alzheimer's," he says.

"Alzheimer's is something you don't make too many predictions about. It's been a tough area to be successful in but, if I stack our venture with Elan against anything else in development, I'd say we're ahead."

The company is optimistic that Grange Castle represents a new beginning for Wyeth here rather than a conclusion and anticipates growing its presence in Ireland which, with the US and Britain, is now a major centre of operations for the group.

Essner is also upbeat about the prospects for expansion in Ireland."We have a good home in Ireland and as the company expands, I would expect that our presence in Ireland would expand with it."