Roche to expand business presence in Riga

The global biotechnology giant Roche has announced the launch of a new branch of its Roche Services & Solutions (RSS) EMEA centre in Riga. This is in addition to the company’s Pharma and Diagnostics teams already based in the city.

“Our new team in Riga will play an important role for us as we continue to broaden our capabilities for RSS in EMEA. We will start recruitment in Q2 2023 and aim to ramp up the operations to more than 200 employees over four to five years,” said Martin Kikstein, Head of RSS EMEA.

RSS is Roche’s global business services organisation with main sites in Budapest (Hungary), San José (Costa Rica) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), offering customer-centric solutions to its partners within Roche in more than 150 countries.

Riga chosen for talent and infrastructure 

The rationale for setting up the new location in Riga is the continued high demand for talents in various areas of expertise.

“We are confident that the talent we hire in Latvia will play a crucial role to successfully provide exceptional value for our partners and to deliver on our purpose of “doing now what patients need next”. We aim to recruit talents in exciting and emerging fields such as Digital Marketing, Regulatory Capabilities, Agile Coaching, Project Management as well as Finance,” Kikstein shared.

After a thorough evaluation of several potential locations, the choice fell on Riga due to the city’s high educational standards, infrastructure and most importantly, the availability of talents that the company requires.

“Riga is in a unique position – global business services are gaining momentum in our city right now. This means that there is still a lot of untapped talent here, as well as a lot of opportunities for the industry to grow. There is excellent cooperation between the city of Riga and Roche. The Riga Investment and Tourism Agency has been working with Roche ever since the company first showed interest in operating in Latvia. The announcement of the opening of the RSS centre is an acknowledgment to the success of our collaboration!” added Mārtiņš Staķis, Mayor of Riga.

Source: Press release. Photo: Shutterstock.