The redundancies will be at the company’s Boronia site, which employs 363 people.
GSK said that it is estimated that 120 jobs will be lost through the transformation. However, it also said that any redundancy will not come into effect immediately as the process will take some time to account for regulatory requirements of affected markets.
“We will support our impacted employees throughout the process. While this will be difficult, we must focus on our strengths. We have a strong capability in higher technology manufacturing and will build this side of the business,” Troy Webb, Boronia’s site director, said.
The Boronia manufacturing facility is renowned for Rotacaps, a distribution device for respiratory medicines that the company is investing in to support patients in emerging markets, and Blow Fill Seal, a high quality container for sterile liquid medicines.
“Despite continuing challenges in the operating environment in Australia, our vision is to be the GSK centre of excellence worldwide for supplying low cost unit dose, blow fill seal and dry powder inhalation medicines,” Webb said.
GlaxoSmithKline employs 1500 people around Australia.