Athlone firm planning to expand to facilitate production of weight loss drug

Pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk has announced that it will manufacture the weight loss drug Wegovy in tablet form at its Monksland facility.

The company intends to expand its manufacturing facility in Athlone to facilitate production of the drug, Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar told Bloomberg media in an interview.

The tablets will be manufactured at the firm's Athlone base for markets outside the United States.

Only last year Novo Nordisk announced 115 redundancies at its plant in Athlone.

The redundancies, 75 of which were mandatory, represented more than a quarter of the total staff at the pharmaceutical firm's local facility.

The Wegovy tablet was launched in the United States in January with approximately 240,000 people using the product to date.

Speaking to Bloomberg in a recent interview, the company CEO said the tablet was "not a chemical entity", but an "incredibly potent and effective pill".

Wegovy became available in injectable form in Ireland about a year ago.