Pfizer purchase former ADM plant site

PHARMACEUTICAL giant Pfizer has refused to comment on speculation that they may build a bio-plant on the former ADM site at Ringaskiddy.

The company, however, confirmed yesterday that it had purchased all of the former ADM site, apart from a jetty and a storage area known as the tank farm.

A spokeswoman described it as a “strategic purchase” which will ensure that an incompatible operation cannot be set up next to the Pfizer plant. She refused to say what Pfizer paid for the site.

She said the ADM plant itself would be dismantled, a process which would take about two years to complete.

“There will have to be a remediation of the site to satisfy the Environmental Protection Agency,” she said.

It is expected that ADM will sell off the tank farm and the jetty to a third party.

Pfizer owned the ADM site up until 1990 when it sold it to Archer Daniels Midlands, a company which has its headquarters in Illinois. Last September, the troubled chemical company closed with the loss of 160 jobs.