About 600 full-time jobs will be lost in Sweden as packaging operations are expanded in Wuxi, China. The cuts will come on top of the 7,600 positions the drugmaker plans to eliminate by 2010. The plant closings will occur in Spain, Belgium and Sweden by 2013. Manufacturing jobs will also be trimmed in Sweden and the UK as production is shifted to lower-cost countries in emerging markets.

“These moves are a continuation of AstraZeneca’s programme to improve the organisation’s productivity and efficiency,” David Smith, AstraZeneca’s executive vp operations, says in a statement. “It moves the supply process closer to the customer, responding to their requirements and improving the security of the product wherever it is bought.

Yesterday, AstraZeneca reported that 2008 earnings would be at the low end of its forecast because of generic competition to its Pulmicort Respules asthma med. Although, the drugmaker also announced today that it won a temporary restraining order in the federal court in New Jersey preventing the sale of a generic by Teva Pharmaceutical until a patent hearing scheduled for November 25 (back story).

Thanks to Bloomberg News