A leading hi-tech pharmaceutical business - one of Northern Ireland's 'blue chip' companies - isn't wasting time in its attempt to derail a planned waste recycling plant on its doorstep.

The scheme, planned for Portadown, may even threaten jobs if it gets the go-ahead according to Almac, a multi-million pound global pharmaceutical business headquartered on the Seagoe industrial estate.

Plans to build the recycling centre right next door has dismayed its boss and founder Sir Allen McClay who said: "I am not crying wolf," but branded the planning process "madness".

"A waste disposal unit, with scores of lorries carrying all sorts of waste, is totally incompatible with a global pharmaceutical complex where the need for a controlled environment and hygiene is supreme.

"It's madness that the planners are even considering this application. The planning legislation must be changed to prevent applications like this in an area where there is a company like Almac, food factories, schools, residential developments and a hotel."

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The application to develop the centre was first lodged in December last year but there was still enough concern this week to prompt a high turnout for a public meeting addressed by Sir Allen.

He told the meeting that if the facility went ahead, it would jeopardise the entire future of the firm and the 1,300 jobs it supports.

The business is worth some £35 million to the local economy and at present a further £10 million investment is planned that could generate another 200 posts.

Sir Allen said: "It would close us down and we're talking 1,320 jobs here, 14 buildings, a total investment of £350 million over the years, a world-class pharmaceutical facility and all for creating 12 jobs in a waste facility in totally the wrong place."

He asked: "There are five professors on this site, 95 PhDs and 520 with third level education – how can all this be sacrificed on the matter of a waste disposal facility that can be quite easily sited away from industry, schools and housing?"

Although the firm already operates highly sophisticated sire cleaning technology, commercial director John Irvine said yesterday that it could not cope with the threat of such a centre, literally, on Almac's doorstep.

"What they cannot remove are very minute particulates and what they certainly cannot remove are odours which undoubtedly would be carried from this site," he said.

(BMcC)