GSK Consumer Healthcare, which makes Panadol products, will close its factory on Hughes Ave, Ermington, by 2020 after a review determined it was not competitive long term.
The company said the manufacturing facility, recently upgraded, required significant investment over five-to-ten years to keep it competitive.
“The significant investment required in the site in the future would prevent us from being able to supply our products at the right cost for our consumers in the long-term,” Michael Tyler, vice-president, Asia Middle East and Africa Supply Chain, said.
“This will be a phased closure over the next four years as production is gradually transferred to a combination of other GSK manufacturing sites in our network and third-party contract manufacturers.”
The facility manufactured products valued at around $240 million of net sales in 2015. In 2015, the annual volume produced at the site was 66.9 million packs, which equated to 1.9 billion tablets.
The closure of the Ermington facility comes after a statement by Vincent Cotard, general manager of consumer healthcare Australia, in 2014, that it was a “centre of excellence.”
"We continue to invest in our factory; Panadol is an icon … I expect this factory to continue to grow," he said.
Mr Tyler, who started his GSK career at Ermington, said GSK would work with its employees to help them find other work.
“Where redeployment is not an option, we will provide outplacement support to help our employees find work outside of GSK and will provide redundancy packages when the time comes for our employees to leave the business,” he said.
Mr Tyler said the decision to close the facility may result in office relocation for the Consumer Healthcare commercial employees based in Ermington.
