Northern Ireland pharmaceutical firm Almac increases pre-tax profit by 33%

Almac, the Craigavon-based pharmaceutical company, increased its pre-tax profit by 33% to £63.5m in 2020.

The firm said performance had been boosted by licence payments from products developed in-house.

Turnover increased by 6% from £634m to £677m.

Almac, which develops its own drugs, is one of Northern Ireland's largest employers with about 6,000 people across its global operations.

A major part of the company's business is manufacturing, distributing and conducting tests for big global firms.

As the race for vaccines and treatment for Covid-19 escalated during 2020, Almac said it partnered with a variety of pharmaceutical, biotech and research institutions to support over 140 separate research projects.

These included providing clinical trials support to BioNTech as it tested its successful vaccine.

The company moved non-manufacturing staff to remote working at the start of the pandemic.

Alan Armstrong, the group chief executive, said the last year was "challenging for everyone as companies, including Almac, had to adapt much of their typical operational practices in response to the pandemic whilst ensuring the safest working environment for employees".

He paid tribute to his staff and said the business has committed to "a number of significant expansion and improvement projects across our sites in the US, Europe and Asia".