Ernst & Young's Brooks says that pharmaceutical companies, like every other kind of company, are moving to China not because of low-cost production but high-value proximity to the country's population and its growing middle class. He says multinational pharmaceutical companies are also looking at England, Scandinavia and India.
   While Ireland made headlines over the past year for its Wyeth and Amgen blockbusters, Brooks says he sees the wave of Irish investment "receding a bit" since the big explosion of the Celtic Tiger. In addition to the twin specters of growing EU unease with Irish incentive packages and renewed scrutiny by the U.S. Treasury Dept. of U.S. companies counting profits in Ireland, there is the plain fact that there is only so much skilled labor to go around. Then there is the next wave of globalization to consider:
   "Ireland had certain advantages and could serve a lot of continental Europe," says Brooks, "but as people have grown more global, the same is true of India, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper."
   The principal Asian target for investment remains China, as seen by the groundbreaking for a new $83-million production and development site by Novartis in Changshu, Jiangsu Province, near the Yangtze River. Suzhou Novartis Pharma Technology Co Ltd. is the sixth project in China for the Swiss company, and should be fully operational with 250 employees by the end of 2007.
   Low cost is definitely still a factor too. Until this project, cumulative investment in China by Novartis was $100 million, according to Shanghai Daily, with employment of 1,700 people. But certainly growing sales is a strong factor as well: The company's sales volume growth rate in China was 26.6 percent in 2005, and has been averaging 25 percent since 1999.
   The new project begins as the company continues on an expansion announced in 2005: the doubling of capacity at its plant in Changping, Beijing. Plans are still being hatched for an R&D center from U.S.-based division Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.
   China also will see increased production for diabetes-related products. Novo Nordisk has just opened a major expansion of its insulin pen production plant in Tianjin, increasing employment there by 100. The company's NovoPen system is used by some 3.5 million people worldwide.
   "Our expansion in China reflects the internationalization of our production base and our commitment to the Chinese market," said Kare Schultz, COO of Novo Nordisk. "The new plant is yet another example of the increasingly important role China is playing in Novo Nordisk's global operations, and we will continue to build the Tianjin plant into a world-class insulin production base."
   The company also operates an R&D center in Beijing.
   Asian investment of a different sort is taking place in Dubai, where Wyeth has just opened a regional headquarters for the Middle East and north Africa that will employ 300. The company first entered the Middle East marketplace in 1963 with an office in Egypt.