Gerard Hilberath, Janssen Biologics; Mark Brophy, John Sisk & Son; Ambassador John Neary; Julie Sinnamon, CEO, Enterprise Ireland; An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny T.D.
John Sisk & Son are the construction managers for the project, which was designed by Irish-headquartered PM Group, with engineering services provided by Dornan Engineering Ireland. It involves a major fit-out at the existing Janssen Biologics facility (a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary) at Leiden to introduce a new pharmaceutical process. This will operate as a Vaccine Manufacturing launch facility facilitating Phase lll clinical trials. The overall project value is €80m.
The Taoiseach visited the project as part the 3 day Enterprise Ireland Trade and Investment Mission to Netherlands and Germany.
According to Frank Quirk, Director of John Sisk & Son: “This is an example of how relationships built in Ireland between Irish businesses can be used to win major business overseas. The companies involved in this project have world-class skills in developing major pharma projects, and expect to deploy them elsewhere in future.”
During 2015 John Sisk & Son also completed a major project at Geel in Belgium, also for a Johnson & Johnson company. They have worked on a number of J & J projects in Ireland in recent years.
The project itself involves a retrofit of an existing fallow space on the Leiden site spread over two floors with a new a cleanroom including three cold rooms for storing the product at each stage of the manufacturing process. Work commenced in October 2014 and is scheduled to be substantially complete in March 2016.
SISK Group is a fifth generation, 150 year old family business founded in Cork, Ireland in 1859. It has grown from a small local builder to an international construction company (John Sisk & Son), now diversified into consumer products, property and other investments in Ireland, U.K., Europe & the Middle East employing over 2000 people. The company has a reputation & a track record built around quality, reliability, partnership, integrity & trust. The Group is one of the largest privately owned companies in Ireland with a turnover of €1.1 billion and over 2000 employees.
