Roche to close Nutley, USA, site with 1,000 job losses

Swiss drug major Roche (ROG: SIX) yesterday announced a consolidation and streamlining of research activities, that will see the closing of what was for more than 80 years its US headquarters in Nutley, New Jersey, with R&D activities there to be consolidated in Switzerland (Schlieren) and Germany (Penzberg), focusing on oncology, virology, metabolism and neuroscience.

Closure of the Nutley site will result in a reduction of around 1,000 jobs. The move is another indication of difficulties in the pharmaceutical industry, which is currently facing the biggest “patent cliff” in history, with the likes of Pfizer and AstraZeneca having already announced thousands of job losses in their R&D and other operations.

Roche Pharma will continue to have a presence on the US East Coast with a Pharmaceuticals Translational Clinical Research Center of about 240 positions at an as yet undisclosed site. The Roche group overall employs 20,800 people in the USA and continues to strongly invest in Pharma R&D in the country through its Genentech subsidiary, which is based in South San Francisco, California, and is not affected by this reorganization.