Between 100 and 200 jobs will disappear at AstraZeneca in Mölndal. An additional 1000 positions will disappear in Södertälje, outside Stockholm, where the company is phasing out their R&D facility.

In 2010 AstraZeneca closed down its research facility in Lund with 900 employees, many of whom moved to the facility in Mölndal.

"Sweden is still important to us. Mölndal is an important facility," says Anders Ekblom, CEO of AstraZeneca Sweden, to Göteborgs-Posten.

He assured that the activities with focus on heart/vascular and respiratory will remain in Mölndal.

The cut-back in Södertälje is due to the phasing out of AstraZeneca's R&D facility in the city, which is a result of a restructuring programme that was announced today. The company writes in a statement:

"Around 1,100 and 1,200 positions within AstraZeneca Sweden will be affected, whereof a majority is located in Södertälje. In addition a range of support functions will also be affected."

"It might be redundancies, it might be early retirements or jobs elsewhere in the company," Ann-Leena Mikiver, AstraZeneca spokesperson, told the news agency TT.

The restructuring programme will focus on R&D in the neuroscience therapy area. AstraZeneca will create a smaller "virtual" research group within neuroscience, made up of around 40-50 researchers. The group will be based in Boston in the United States and Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

After the cut-backs AstraZeneca will still have over 5000 employees in Sweden. Worldwide the restructuring programme is expected to affect approximately 7,300 positions.

AstraZeneca report a profit before tax of around 2,167 million US dollars for the fourth quarter of 2011. Profit for the same period in 2010 was 2,283 million US dollars. Turnover for the fourth quarter of 2011 was 8,656 million US dollars, compared with 8,617 million US dollars for the same period in 2010.

However, AstraZeneca warned that 2012 will prove a challenge for the whole industry as well as for AstraZeneca. The company believes earnings will continue to be affected by expiring patents on key drugs, as well as government price intervention in Europe and the United States.