The relocation of AstraZeneca’s global corporate headquarters to Cambridge is one of the biggest property stories to come out of the city recently.
However, despite its scale, little is known about the logistics of the move – until now.
Andy Williams, who is overseeing the firm’s transition from Alderley Park near Macclesfield in Cheshire, told Estates Gazette how the new facility, which is currently going through planning, is far removed from its current site.
Speaking after Estates Gazette’s Question Time debate, Williams said: “That old large pharma model of having a facility miles away from anybody else, with big fences around it, is gone.
“We have very much decided this new facility is going to be ‘porous’; it’s going to enhance collaboration and it’s going to be interactive so that we are really part of the community.”
AstraZeneca, the UK’s second largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, announced in summer 2013 it would invest £330m in a new facility at Cambridge Biomedical Campus, bringing about 1,500 jobs to the region.
The Anglo-Swedish firm will also move its biologics subsidiary MedImmune and 500 staff from its current home in Granta Park Cambridge.
Williams said the Cambridge Biomedical Campus was an ideal choice because it had sufficient space to meet the needs of the two firms, plus it was in close to central Cambridge, the university, and patients and clinicians in the hospital.
The Cambridge Institute, Institute for Metabolic Disease, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Cancer Research UK were also important neighbours, he said.
The new facility, which will cover 11 of the campus’ 70 acres, is earmarked for completion in 2016 and will put AstraZeneca at the heart of one of the UK’s biggest medical research hubs, as well as inside the so-called research golden triangle of Cambridge, Oxford and London.
In the podcast below, EG asks Williams why his company chose the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, what the take-up of staff will be from Alderley Park and what the firm’s key criteria were in choosing a new site.
rebecca.kent@estatesgazette.com
