Pharmaceutical firm creates 14 new jobs

Invest Northern Ireland is supporting the recruitment, almost half of which are already in place.

The roles include a range of managerial, specialist and manufacturing positions, to support the firm’s expansion in the south Derry town.

The company has built a state of the art manufacturing facility in Draperstown to help drive iMed Group International’s expansion in Great Britain and European markets.

Once in place, the new jobs will contribute £350,000 annually in additional salaries to the local economy.

Speaking about the investment, co-owners Laurence O’Kane and Paul Murphy said in a statement: “iMed operates in a highly regulated sector, requiring extensive batch traceability and label conformity. Invest NI support towards job creation and upskilling our workforce will give us the resources needed to scale the business quickly and increase our market share.

“The practical support we gained from Invest NI’s experts in productivity encouraged us to implement lean processes in our operations. These measures enabled us to achieve a step change in capacity and output, safeguarding our competitiveness in a rapidly changing market. Our new facility consolidates our manufacturing activity across the group, creating cost efficiencies and will enable us to respond promptly to forthcoming changes in legislation.”

iMed is one of Ireland’s leading pharmaceutical wholesale importers, with regulatory approved in-house manufacturing for repackaging and relabelling of prescription and over the counter pharmaceutical products.

Welcoming the investment, Grainne McVeigh, Invest NI’s Director of Life Sciences & Scaling, said iMed’s decision to expand and consolidate its manufacturing capabilities in Mid Ulster is positive news for the Life Sciences sector and wider manufacturing industry.