GE Healthcare unveils £30.5m production line at Cork plant – The Irish Times

The healthcare division of US multinational General Electric (GE) on Friday opened its new 30.5 million euro manufacturing line in Carrigtohill, Co Cork, where it has created 140 jobs at the company’s factory.

The new line focuses on manufacturing injectable diagnostic imaging agents, dyes known as “contrast media” that are used in X-ray and CT or CT scan procedures to increase the contrast of images taken . Imaging agents are an area of ​​”significant growth”, due to the “increasing worldwide prevalence of chronic disorders”, GE Healthcare said in a statement.

“We expect global demand for iodinated contrast media to double over the next ten years due to growth in CT imaging procedures,” said Kevin O’Neill, President and Chief Operating Officer of the business. pharmaceutical diagnostics from GE Healthcare. “As an industry leader, we understand our responsibility to help meet this growing customer and patient demand and this new production line is part of our broader commitment to produce an additional 30 million doses of products. of contrast for patients per year by 2025.”

The company, which is due to be spun off from GE in January, has completed the expansion of its footprint at the IDA business park in Carrigtohill over two years, investing 30.5 million euros in the new facility where it currently employs over of 760 people. The investment will help increase production capacity at the Cork plant by 50% over the next three years.

Eugene Barrett, Ireland site manager at GE Healthcare, said 2023 marks the company’s 30th anniversary in Cork and the new line is key to its growth plans.

Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Michael McGrath, who attended the opening of the new manufacturing line on Friday, said: “GE Healthcare has consistently invested in manufacturing here in Cork, bringing together cutting-edge technology, the world’s best practices in pharmaceutical health care and a highly skilled workforce. He said GE’s expansion was “another vote of confidence in Cork as a pharmaceutical manufacturing site”.

Last November, GE announced plans to split into three separate publicly traded companies focused on energy, healthcare and aviation to streamline its business and reduce debt.

GE Healthcare is expected to be the first to jump in with the spin-off expected to complete as early as January.

New board members for the unit, which will be called GE HealthCare, include its chief executive, Peter Arduini, as well as executives from Honeywell International and Amazon Web Services. Including GE chief executive Larry Culp as non-executive chairman, the board will have 10 members.