A recent FiercePharma article discussed a conundrum Roche faces with one of their non-operating plants. Back in 2015, the pharmaceutical company decided to close four small-molecule plants around the world. The company sold three of them, but couldn’t find a buyer for the one in Clarecastle, Ireland. So, the company has decided to roll in the breaking balls, and demolish the site. But with 10 buildings on an 88-acre site, that’s no easy task.
Roughly 40,000 metric tons of waste lay on the site, and the project will demand over 90,000 metric tons of backfill to patch the land. The lengthy process will commence in June of 2021, and is expected to wrap near the end of 2024.
