In England, Too

The U.S. is not the only nation in which remanufacturing is taking place. In England, where the first industrial revolution started 40 years before it began in the U.S., new manufacturing is replacing some of the old in the areas around Liverpool, Sheffield and Manchester. Once accounting for about 65% of the world's production of woven cloth, the economy of the city of Manchester in the midlands of England is now dominated by services. But although traditional textile manufacturing is gone from the area, cutting-edge R&D and production definitely are not. Indeed, The North West, the economic developers' name for the region around Manchester, is a vital center of pharmaceutical manufacturing and a rapidly growing center for biotechnology. The two economic sectors complement each other in "almost a seamless join," contends Linda Magee, biotechnology sector director and the head of Bionow for the Northwest Development Agency. In just the last two years, the number of "core" biomedical biotechnology companies has increased to 72 from 42. What's more, some of the small, start-up biotechs doing R&D today in only a few years will be moving from the laboratory to production. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical maker AstraZeneca PLC counts about 7,000 employees at two major sites -- including 2,100 in manufacturing at Macclesfield. In addition to AstraZeneca, six other multinational pharmaceutical companies have facilities in The North West. That half-dozen includes Aventis SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Eli Lilly & Co., GlaxoSmithKline, Miza Pharmaceuticals Inc. and MedImmune Inc.