Roche invests another € 600 million in Penzberg

07 Mar 2023

Roche invests another € 600 million in Penzberg

With total sales of €8,1bn, Roche can look back on a successful fiscal year 2022. In 2021 totals sales had been around €9.5bn due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Without COVID-19-related effects in business development, the Pharmaceuticals Division recorded a growth of 6.6% and the Diagnostics Division an increase of 7.9% in fiscal year 2022. In addition, Roche announced that it would invest a further €600m. in a diagnostics production center at its Penzberg site.

Although Roche’s total sales in Germany went 14.8% down from COVID-19-year 2021 (2022: €8.1bn 2021: €9.5bn), the Group's core pharmaceuticals business in Germany achieved record sales of €2bn (+6.6% in core business). Excluding the COVID-19-related loss, the Diagnostics Division also performed well (+7.9%) with sales of around €694m.

The Group continued to invest heavily in its German sites: around €675m (€599m 2021) was spent by Roche last year on production facilities, technology developments, infrastructure and the German sites in general, which now employ around 18,000 people, an increase of around 500 compared to 2021.

Following the already high investments of recent years, Roche will again invest around €600m in the construction of a modern and sustainable diagnostics production center at the Penzberg site. In the future, input materials for a wide range of diagnostic tests, including those for the detection of cardiovascular and infectious diseases, will be produced there. This will "further strengthen the biotechnology campus in Penzberg as a campus of the future." The new building is expected to be completed by 2027, increase production capacity and replace old production buildings on the site for efficiency and sustainability reasons. 

The new managing director of Roche Diagnostics GmbH, Dr. Claudia Fleischer, who was appointed at the beginning of the year, emphasized that such investments are "not a foregone conclusion" and that the German sites have to hold their own against international Roche sites around the world every time. "Investment decisions are long-term, strategic corporate decisions. They therefore require planning security, reliability and the right framework conditions," Fleischer said. "As a globally active company, it is our wish that Germany remains open to innovation and creates a 'new Germany speed' in order for us to remain a central location for investment and value creation in the future."