US-headquartered West Pharmaceutical Services has created an additional 60 jobs at one of its Dublin sites after it created a new global finance centre.
The business, which sells packaging containment for injectable medicines, said the new Dublin office includes accounting and finance activities for the company’s global operations.
In total, West employs more than 1,000 staff across the Republic, including at manufacturing facilities in both Waterford and Dublin.
The company scaled up its Waterford plant in response to a surge in customer demand owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. West supplies millions of rubber vial stoppers to a dozen global customers from its Waterford facility and doubled its workforce there in the past year to meet demand.
Chief financial officer Bernard Birkett said the company's commitment to doing its part to provide for the manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines has "resulted in growing our global workforce, expanding facility and equipment resources and shifting to 24/7 operating schedules at several sites, including Waterford, to address the demand for components associated with Covid-19".
“This new finance support model enables our overall business strategy of responding and transforming to meet the changing needs of the market to deliver high-quality components and service to our customers that will ultimately improve more patient lives – and that’s what matters most,” he added.
Headquarters
Founded in 1923, New York Stock Exchange-listed West is headquartered in Pennsylvania.
At the end of July, the company raised its full-year net sales guidance to a range of between $2.75 billion to $2.76 billion, compared with a previous range of between $2.63 billion and $2.65 billion.
The company's chief executive, Eric Green, said the company's strong second-quarter performance was driven by momentum in organic sales growth in addition to "increased demand for our products associated with Covid-19 vaccines".
