Sir Allen McClay Dies At 78

Sir Allen McClay, founder of Almac, the fine chemicals contract manufacturing and services firm in Northern Ireland died Jan. 12 at the age of 78 following a bout with cancer.

At the time of his death, McClay was hospitalized at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia. He had been attending the company's quarterly board meeting at its U.S. corporate headquarters in Audubon, Pa., when be became ill in early November.

Recognized as an innovator in building a broad-based services company focused on serving the pharmaceuticals industry, McClay will also be remembered as an entrepreneur and industrialist who launched and nurtured a successful high tech company near strife-torn Belfast. For his accomplishment he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005.

McClay formed Almac after retiring from his original venture, Galen Holdings, which he launched in 1968. Galen had gone public in 1997and was purchased by Warner Chilcott Pharmaceuticals. That firm turned the comany toward pharmaceutical manufacturing, primarily for the U.S. market. McClay, unhappy with the direction his old company was taking, decided to form a new one more in line with his original vision.

"My proposition was this: Can we build a service-type company for the big pharmas and the biotechs?" McClay told C&EN in a profile published in 2008 (C&EN, March 3, 2008, page 21). "I retired on Friday and came back on Monday,"

Despite his career in science, McClay says his main subjects of interest when he was a student were English Literature and the arts. He discovered chemistry when he apprenticed with the local pharmacist—a job he took, he says, because he would get paid. He went on to manage the pharmacy for two years and then went to work for Glaxo as a sales representative.

"There, I started to mix with people who were developing medicines and vaccines for tuberculosis," McClay says. "I had things kicking around in my head. I thought I would create something small in Northern Ireland in Galen. People around me saw what I was doing and started thinking bigger."

McClay came to view chemistry as a key route to success for the company, and also to the growth of innovative industry in economically depressed Northern Ireland. In the six years since launching Almac, he saw the company incorporate innovative chemistry-based services with new business divisions such as its diagnostics division, which focuses on the development of biomarkers. "There is a sea change in pharma," he told C&EN. "It is all moving toward specialized medicine."

McClay, known to all as a great lover of golf and member of two of the world's most prestigious golf clubs, Royal County Down and Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland, maintained his interest in the arts and literature.

"I like poetry," he said at the end of the C&EN interview in the company's boardroom. He pointed to a painting of a seascape he had recently purchased in New Zealand. "If you look at that picture you will see a haze, and the water is moving. It appealed to me, and I had to have it. I shouldn't say this, but the management board meetings can become boring, so I look at it."

McClay was married to his longtime partner, Heather Topping, on Nov. 18.