Alderley Park 'will remain flagship bioscience location' Manchester Science Parks takes over former AstraZeneca site A long chapter in the UK's pharmaceutical history came to a close yesterday with the sale of AstraZeneca's 400-acre Alderley Park site in Cheshire. The new owners of the site - Manchester Science Parks (MSP) - have pledged to maintain and expand Alderley Park as a leading UK incubator for life sciences businesses. MSP will "build on Alderley Park's heritage of scientific innovation," said AZ in a statement. The company said last year that it planned to cut about 1,600 jobs as part of an overhaul of its R&D operations, with 600 jobs lost in Cheshire, and would also relocate its global corporate headquarters to Cambridge by 2016.