France will start manufacturing paracetamol again on its soil in 2023, the pharmaceutical subcontractor Seqens announced on Tuesday, formalizing the launch of a new factory intended to ensure this production on its Roussillon site (Isère).

This announcement comes a year after the presentation by President Emmanuel Macron of a strategy intended to relocate the entire production chain of this molecule within three years, the essential nature of which was highlighted at the worst of the health crisis.

The new plant will have a capacity of 10,000 tonnes per year.

Its production will be absorbed by the pharmaceutical groups Sanofi (Doliprane brand) and Upsa (Efferalgan brand) which until now were content to package in France the active ingredient of this drug imported from Asia.

The amount of investment required, which is supported by the France Relance plan, has not been made public.

A factory closed in 2008

World leader in aspirin, Seqens is also a major manufacturer of paracetamol with two factories in China.

The group stresses that its future plant will be five to ten times less polluting than the existing paracetamol plants.

A nod to history, Seqens notes that the Roussillon platform was the last site in France to produce paracetamol.

The plant was closed in 2008 by its then owner, the chemical group Rhodia.

Quoted in the Seqens press release, the Minister for Industry Agnès Pannier-Runacher welcomed this investment which makes it possible to "strengthen the resilience of our production capacities for health products and thus ensure the health sovereignty of the European Union ".

In November, Seqens had indicated that it wanted to devote 65 million euros to the production, on French soil, of five other molecules entering into the composition of drugs that were lacking during the health crisis.

Based in Ecully, in the Lyon suburbs, the company generates more than a billion euros in sales and employs some 3,200 people.

  • Drug

  • Emmanuel Macron

  • Health

  • Medicine