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A Canadian real estate company is planning to demolish an old pharmaceutical plant in South Gloucestershire once owned by pharma giant AstraZeneca and develop a huge new logistics and warehousing park.

Vancouver’s Epta Development Corporation (EDC) bought the 100-acre Avlon Works pharmaceutical processing site in Avonmouth in December - and is now in the process of selling off all its remaining assets.

Maynards, an industrial auctions and liquidations, has been appointed to manage the asset recovery and demolition of the site.

The project is so vast, according to Maynards, the asset list runs to 144 pages and the company expects to put together a sales catalogue of more than 5,000 lots, to include “everything above ground”.

Once the site has been cleared, EDC is proposing to create a 1.85 million square foot park - a project that would lead to major economic development, job creation and regeneration for the region, said Maynard.

Avlon Works was operational for 50 years from 1969 to 2019. In 2016, AstraZeneca sold the site to Avara Pharmaceutical in the hope of securing the operation’s future, but Avara fell into administration and the entire site was put up for sale.

Among the equipment and facilities to be disposed of are:

• five large-scale cGMP API plants, with 6-10m3 reactors, pressure filter, conical and centrifuge drying

• two large-scale milling facilities with Hosakawa mills

• cGMP kilo scale facility with 20-100L reactors

• four quality, two environmental, six chemistry and one analytical laboratories

• IMS solvent recovery unit (Koch Modular Process)

• a biological wastewater treatment facility

• a combined heat and power plant

• extensive warehousing including cold storage

• offices, workshops, site services, facilities and internal transport throughout

Maynards’ º£½ÇÊÓƵ managing director Daniel Gray said the spares inventory alone was valued at £2.5million.