The facility will double previous granulation capacity for tablet formulations produced at Macclesfield, which is AstraZeneca's second largest manufacturing site worldwide. Twenty new employees have joined the existing workforce to operate the new facility.

The tablets expansion facility will source many products across various disease areas, including major treatments soon to be launched for international markets.

Dr Barrie Thorpe, Executive Vice President, AstraZeneca Operations opened the plant and said: "This is another major project forming part of the Company's ongoing programme to provide manufacturing facilities which will enable us to deliver important medicines to customers worldwide in the right quantities and at the right time."

The investment in the new tablets facility is part of an extensive range of projects which are being carried out to meet business demands. Major refurbishment and remodelling of production facilities has been carried out at Macclesfield in a short timescale to ensure the site has the capacity to meet ambitious growth targets for various products.

Other projects which are part of the major investment programme at Macclesfield, totalling US$ 112 million (77 million GBP), include new packaging facilities for several other significant products in the AstraZeneca portfolio. In total, almost twenty projects are involved in the programme, which has been completed five months ahead of schedule, thanks to effective cross-functional teamwork.

There is continued growth in world demand for quetiapine and sales rose 67 per cent from $424million in 2000 to $700 million in 2001. Last week, patient groups, medical professionals and AstraZeneca welcomed guidance issued by NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) recommending that doctors should be able to prescribe the newer atypical antipsychotic treatments when treating many patients with schizophrenia. The guidance recommends that atypical antipsychotics, such as quetiapine should be considered as a first line treatment of choice for individuals with newly diagnosed schizophrenia and those patients currently experiencing, or have previously experienced, unacceptable side effects on the older medications.

Schizophrenia, which usually develops in young adulthood, affects about one in a hundred people at some point in their life, with about 250,000 people in the UK with the illness at one time.   [1]

AstraZeneca is a major international healthcare business engaged in the research, development, manufacture and marketing of prescription pharmaceuticals and the supply of healthcare services. It is one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in the world with healthcare sales of over $16.4 billion and leading positions in sales of gastrointestinal, oncology, anaesthesia (including pain management), cardiovascular, central nervous system (CNS) and respiratory products.