Baar,20.10.2016

Biogen company to leave city to move to new headquarters in Quadrolith building

The Biogen bio-tech company, which is currently headquartered in Zug, is to move into the new Quadrolith building in Baar in 2018.
 
Founded in 1978, Biogen is very much involved in research, for example in developing treatments for people with rare and severe neurological conditions such as autoimmune diseases.
 
A tenancy agreement for 8,200 square-metres of space in this new development, on which building started last February, was signed on Wednesday.
 
When complete, this development, which will be made up of two futuristic-looking U-shaped buildings (photograph), will provide 27,000 square metres of space in all. The tenancy Biogen has signed with the Alfred Müller AG property company actually covers 70% of the space available in the first stage of this CHF 120 million development.
 
It was in 2004 that Biogen moved its headquarters from Paris to Zug, with some 500 of its employees expected to move to this new development when complete.
 
It will be in these new headquarters that Biogen will manage its 21 subsidiary companies in Europe and Canada and support them operatively. In addition, the firm has distribution companies in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and eastern Europe.
 
Biogen’s Swiss subsidiaries and its “Biosimilar” sector will also be accommodated at these new headquarters, enabling the operations of its various Swiss business entities to be centralised from this one site, too.
It was only recently that the company announced a CHF 1 billion investment in a state-of-the-art bio-pharmaceutical production plant in Luterbach in the canton of Solothurn. As Biogen spokesman Martin A. Ziegler added, it is with this and these new headquarters in Baar that the company will be able to strengthen its presence in Switzerland, reflecting its position as one of the leading bio-technological companies in the world.
 
Commenting on the move away from the city of Zug, deputy mayor André Wicki said he was sorry to see the company move but was glad it was remaining in the canton, where it will continue to form part of a cluster of such companies, and what is more, is soon to be joined by yet another biotech firm, the American Tesaro company, which announced only last week it would be setting up its European headquarters here.
 
Quadrolith is actually situated on Neuhofstrasse in Baar, not far from the motorway exit to the municipality and the suburban railway halt at Baar-Neufeld. When complete, as many as 1,000 people will work there. Neither is there any lack of interest in these premises, though Esther Lötscher, a spokeswoman for the Alfred Müller AG company, declined to mention the names of potential future tenants.