Cork will become the main global manufacturer of a revolutionary anticholesterol drug when the pharmaceutical company, Warner-Lambert, completes its upgrading of three production plants acquired earlier this year.

The £39 million investment programme by Warner-Lambert will result in the creation of more than 100 jobs, the Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment said yesterday. Ms Harney said that the pharmaceutical company, supported by IDA Ireland, would be upgrading facilities at Ringaskiddy, formerly owned by Hickson Pharmachem, and hoped to build a tableting/finishing plant there. It will also be developing a facility at Little Island, acquired from Plaistow Ltd, and a plant owned by Island Pharmaceuticals at Carrigtwohill.

An IDA spokesman said the three facilities would be used in the production of Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium), a cholesterol-lowering drug, which had not yet been marketed in Europe.

"This has become the fastest-growing and most successful drug launch ever in the history of the pharmaceutical industry worldwide," he said.

A spokeswoman for WarnerLambert said the company wanted Cork to be the supplier of the worldwide requirement of the bulk material. The drug has been launched in the US, Britain and Germany and is expected to be launched in Ireland in November. If the planning application for the tableting plant at Ringaskiddy is successful, Warner-Lambert Ireland could win the bid to produce its powder material in tablet form. "There is still a battle between Ireland and a few other countries in the world to get the tableting," the IDA spokesman said. He added that while the grant support for the drug manufacturing was low, as is common in such cases, the tableting facility "would fit into a different definition of grant policy". It would be a "clean", hi-tech operation, offering high levels of employment, he said.

Warner-Lambert currently employs more than 500 people at its plants in Dun Laoghaire and Co Cork, and 40,000 worldwide.