AstraZeneca to invest $2.5 billion in Beijing hub

AstraZeneca on Friday said that it will invest $2.5 billion in a research and development center in Chinese capital Beijing, months after the British pharmaceutical giant faced local regulators’ scrutiny over its import duties.

The new hub is expected to take AstraZeneca’s Beijing workforce to around 1,700 employees.

The investment in Beijing comes as part of a partnership with the city’s Municipal Government and the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area Administrative Office, AstraZeneca said.

Under the deal, AstraZeneca will enter research and development collaborations with biotech firms Harbour BioMed and Syneron Bio and will launch a joint venture with BioKangtai to develop, produce, and market vaccines for respiratory and other infectious diseases.

The partnership with BioKangtai will see the company open its first vaccine manufacturing facility in China.

AstraZeneca’s Beijing research hub will be the second of its kind in China, as the company already has a research and development center in Shanghai. The Beijing center “will partner with the cutting-edge biology and AI science in Beijing and be a critical part of our global efforts to bring innovative medicines to patients worldwide,” CEO Pascal Soriot said in a statement.

Shares of AstraZeneca were down by around 0.9% at 12:28 a.m. in London.

Speaking to CNBC’s Julianna Tatelbaum on Friday, Soriot said that China was a “fundamental part of innovation in the future,” but stressed his company’s ongoing devotion to its U.S. footprint.

“We are very committed to the United States, we have two very large research and development centers in the U.S.,” he said.

European companies are under pressure to take steps to shield themselves from White House tariffs under the second administration of Donald Trump, who seeks to reduce the U.S.’ trade deficits with commercial partners and encourage international production Stateside.

The company said investigations into these allegations were underway in China in its full-year earnings report out in February.

“To the best of AstraZeneca’s knowledge, the importation taxes referred to in the Appraisal Opinion relate to (cancer medications) Imfinzi and Imjudo,” the company said at the time. “A fine of between one and five times the amount of unpaid importation taxes may also be levied if AstraZeneca is found liable. AstraZeneca continues to fully cooperate with the Chinese authorities.

In a Friday interview with CNBC, Soriot said his company’s investment in China was “not connected at all” to ongoing investigations into business activities there.

“We have been committed to investing in China for a long time. In the last couple of years, we’ve invested $10 billion in more than 10 R&D partnerships with local biotech companies,” he said.

“Companies like ours, the size of our company, means that we will face headwinds from time to time, and challenges and issues, and of course we regret having to go through a challenging period like this, but it is not related at all to our investment in Beijing, the two are totally separate. This project started in our minds much earlier than the recent challenges we are facing.”