AstraZeneca announces surprise U-turn with plan to inject Britain with massive £300m splurge

Peter Stevens
Thu, 30 Apr 2026 02:36:23 +0000

AstraZeneca has announced a surprise U-turn on investment into the UK - and will press ahead with a major £300million spend.

The pharmaceutical giant last year paused a planned £200million expansion of its research site in Cambridge, and scrapped plans to invest £450million in a Merseyside vaccine plant.

In February 2025, AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot said the firm "couldn’t make the business case work and couldn’t make the investment economically viable".

But after a trade deal with the US was finalised earlier this month, UK pharmaceutical exports will be exempt from American tariffs.

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Britain has also pledged to double spending on innovative medicines from 0.3 per cent to 0.6 per cent of GDP.

Today, Mr Soriot thanked the Government for its "efforts to improve access for patients".

In addition, the thresholds at which the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) judged medicine to be cost-effective for NHS use has improved.

Sir Keir Starmer said at Wednesday's Prime Minister's Questions the investment represented a "major vote of confidence" in Britain and Labour.

The PM told Parliament the investment would "futureproof thousands of jobs in Macclesfield and in Cambridge".

"That is a major vote of confidence in the UK and Labour’s plans to strengthen our economy," he added.

Mr Soriot, who has been outspoken in his criticism of Britain's commercial environment in the past, said: "We look forward to further enhancing the access and the reimbursement environment and build a strong life sciences sector."

The research site in Cambridge will receive £200million of the investment, and will be used to construct a new building on its biomedical campus called the Rosalind Franklin Building.

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The remaining £100million will go towards the Macclesfield site and used to build a "lab of the future" which will use "digital and data tools to advance drug development".

On April 20, Boehringer Ingelheim, a German pharmaceutical company, announced it would build a £150million artifical intelligence accelerator in King's Cross London.

Richard Torbett, chief executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said: "This has been a remarkable month for UK life sciences and for the patients who ultimately benefit when the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies choose to invest here."

He added the two investments from pharmaceutical giants were "powerful signals" the UK was being restored as a leader in life sciences.

Six months ago, Britain's investment environment was seen as not internationally competitive, Mr Torbett said.

He said the US-UK trade deal and an increase to the Nice baseline cost-effectiveness threshold had caused a "shift in how industry sees the UK".

The announcement also followed AstraZeneca revealing higher than expected profits, largely driven by sales for cancer treatments.

Despite the 12 per cent profit boost, shares in the company fell two per cent amid wider falls on the FTSE 100 Index.