€37m investment won't be the last in Cork, Robert Baffi of BioMarin says

In 2011, the Californian company, which makes drugs to treat rare diseases, chose Cork as its base outside of California. That was the nadir of the Irish recession.

The facility started with 12 employees, said BioMarin executive vice-president, Robert Baffi, and that number will surpass 400 by 2020, with a €37m investment into its Shanbally site in Cork.

We’ve had steady growth and we are at about 360 employees now, and we will be adding about 55 people between now and 2020, as this facility gets expanded and as specialised technology comes in,” he said.

Cork is an integral part of BioMarin’s long-term strategy, Mr Baffi said, in its quest to become profitable. The company has a market capitalisation of $17.4bn (€15bn), up from only $400m when Mr Baffi joined, 18 years ago.

“I think investors have done pretty well over that time. Notwithstanding drug development is a marathon and not a sprint, it takes a long period of time to develop some of these drugs, and then an even longer time to reach the commercial opportunity for these rare diseases in many countries.

“We’ve just got a product approved, two years ago, that we manufacture at this plant, Brineura, which treats Batten’s Disease. We are now in our 25th country, two years later, trying to build and reach where the patients are,” he said.

BioMarin, like others in the pharma industry, has not been without controversy, with accusations that the cost of drugs for ‘orphan diseases’ is exorbitant.

There is no doubt our therapeutics have a high price. We generally don’t increase the price of those drugs after they have been established.

“It is may be the nature of the beast, because drug-development is very expensive.

“Our last product, Palynziq, got approved in May in the US and is currently under review in the EU. That was in clinical testing for 10 years, and I, personally, have worked on that product for 17 years. It is a long development and involves a lot of expensive trials, expensive manufacturing.

“You can see, from the types of facilities we have here in Shanbally, the investment that goes into that. If you are going to develop multiple drugs for these indications, we believe the benefits these drugs bring to patients is representative in the price.

While the orphan space is a very challenging one, it is also very rewarding, in terms of treating diseases for which most companies do not develop drugs. From a return on investment, we hope, in the coming years, to become a profitable company,” he said.

BioMarin continues to re-invest the revenues that it generates from sales, in building up Shanbally and in making sure it has the capacity to develop other drugs.

Cork and Dublin account for a quarter of BioMarin global operations, and the recent investment in Cork will not be the last, he said.

“We have space for expansion around the facility. There is around another 10 acres of undeveloped space. We are currently thinking about what the possibilities could be. As our pipeline develops, Shanbally is a strategic aspect of our growth plans, and Ireland now represents nearly a quarter of the company, between our commercial operations in Dublin, which we are also expanding, as well as the manufacturing capabilities here in Shanbally,” Mr Baffi said.

“We have two manufacturing facilities in the world: one in California and one here in Shanbally. We’ve made investments in both technology and people here. For the future, we have great designs for the rest of the facility here. We’re developing products with gene therapy, a new modality, and new technology,” Mr Baffi said.

“While we have constructed our first gene-therapy facility in California to be close to our scientific base, it is likely that the future expansion of that technology will occur here in Cork.

This is a strategic part of BioMarin’s overall philosophy, in how we develop a business continuity model to be able to manufacture our products in different facilities to meet different market requirements, and to allow us to have a testing facility to meet the EU requirements for testing in Europe, for the introduction of products here,” he said.

The Irish business environment, from the IDA to various universities and institutes of technology, to

purpose-built training and research institutes, like NIBRT, has been very accommodating, said Mr Baffi.

“Support by the IDA, significantly in terms of orienting companies like ourselves, as we first came here, making the introductions to the

university professors, and, quite frankly, other companies here, was quite surprising and beneficial. I’ve been on the board of NIBRT for nearly five years now.

“As a facility, it is fantastically well-designed to facilitate training,” he said.