‘Gothenburg is extremely important for us’
Sweden is a vital part of AstraZeneca. And the company plays a key role in Sweden and Gothenburg’s business environment. On 16 May, hundreds of representatives from the local business community had the chance to meet and hear more from Per Alfredsson, the head of AstraZeneca Sweden, who was interviewed on-stage during our seminar in Gothenburg.
Alfredsson has been with the firm for nearly three decades and held posts in Sweden, the UK, the US and the Caribbean. For the past five years he has been the global head of production for biological treatments. A bit over a year ago, he also took over as president of AstraZeneca Sweden.
AstraZeneca is one of the bigger players on the global life science stage. The biopharmaceutical company has nearly 90,000 employees worldwide. It has an annual revenue of around USD 45 billion (SEK 500 billion) and aims to increase this figure to USD 80 billion by 2030.
The company has its roots in Sweden, with Astra founded in Södertälje in 1913. In the late 90s the Swedish firm merged with British company Zeneca, forming AstraZeneca, which is today headquartered in Cambridge, the UK.
Gothenburg – a hub for AstraZeneca’s R&D
Key sites remain in Sweden, including the largest production facility, in Södertälje, outside of Stockholm. It also has an important R&D site in Gothenburg, where it employs over 3,000 people.
“Gothenburg is one of our 5 strategic R&D sites. It’s the largest in terms of employees together with the Gaithersburg site. Gothenburg is strategically, extremely important for us. Above all we focus on cardiovascular diseases, kidney diseases, metabolic diseases, respiratory diseases, immunity diseases and cancer. And these are the areas we will continue to work with here [in Gothenburg],” said Per Alfredsson, during the interview.
“In Gothenburg we put about a quarter of our global R&D investments, roughly SEK 24-25 billion per year,” he added.
The company invests heavily in R&D, around SEK 100 billion every year. It aims to launch 20 new medicines by 2030.
“It’s a high-risk sector. Life science differs from other sectors. When we want to create a new product, it’s not like creating a new car. You’re quite sure that when you start creating a new car, it will result in a new car,” said Alfredsson.
“In our case, we know that a large portion of our projects will fail. They will fall somewhere along the road, and the later they fall, the more money we will have invested. So very little of our research becomes something we can sell.”
An important sector
These medicines, treatments and technologies that AstraZeneca and other life science companies are developing are helping improve health and quality of life, across the world.
“It’s an extremely important sector, both in Sweden and globally, in terms of what we do for patients and healthcare at large. We saw this during the Covid pandemic. Together with the healthcare system, we showed what we [the life science sector] can do.”
AstraZeneca collaborated with Oxford University and supplied one of the vaccines that helped fight the pandemic. Per served as co-lead for the company’s vaccine programme, and led the rapid establishment and start-up of a manufacturing network involving more than 20 partners across more than 15 countries.
“We were in a pandemic. We were one of the companies that could do something about it. It was a lot of work, but fantastic. Looking back, we can see that we did the right thing, as we saved around 6 million lives. Our vaccine also reached many countries that wouldn’t have received the vaccine otherwise.”
Sweden is well positioned
Per also highlighted another aspect of the growing life science sector: it creates a lot of good jobs and is an important contributor to the economy, not least in Sweden, where it employs 56,000 people.
“We don’t talk about it so often, but life science is the third largest export industry in Sweden. AstraZeneca’s exports alone totaled a bit over SEK 150 billion last year, which is about 8% of Sweden’s goods exports,” said Alfredsson.
But competition is fierce. A lot of places want to have life science operations and a strong life science sector. Sweden is among them. It aims to be a leading life science nation.
Alfredsson thinks Sweden needs to take a more active and driving role in EU politics. The EU needs to be more offensive and ensure that we have competitive conditions in Europe.
But he thinks Sweden is well positioned, and AstraZeneca’s operations here are a vital part of the company. The strong collaboration between academia, companies and the public sector is a key strength. Another is the ecosystems and innovative environments that are taking shape, including the BioVentureHub and GoCo Health Innovation City in Gothenburg.
“There is a lot that speaks for Sweden, and the Gothenburg region. There are many strong and innovative companies here in the region and Sweden as well. There are a lot of good things here,” said Alfredsson.
Facts about AstraZeneca’s R&D site in Gothenburg
- Employs just over 3,000 people
- More than 1/3 of the employees are born outside of Sweden
- The site has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions (scope 1 and 2) by 99% since 2015
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