Sanofi breaks ground on carbon-neutral, multi-vaccine site in Singapore - Endpoints News

This time last year, Sanofi an­nounced it would spend $476 mil­lion on a new vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing site in Sin­ga­pore, in a move that it said would cre­ate 200 new jobs and pro­vide for flex­i­bil­i­ty in man­u­fac­tur­ing mul­ti­ple vac­cines at once. The French phar­ma gi­ant broke ground on the site Wednes­day, and added an­oth­er $162 mil­lion to the price tag.

The site in Sin­ga­pore is part of Sanofi's mis­sion to spend $1.3 bil­lion over the next five years to cre­ate two sites for pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness. The oth­er site will be in its na­tive France. The two will be able to pro­duce be­tween three and four vac­cines at once, while cur­rent man­u­fac­tur­ing sites on­ly al­low for the pro­duc­tion of a sin­gle vac­cine.

Sin­ga­pore's lo­ca­tion will be com­plete­ly op­er­a­tional by 2026, the com­pa­ny has said, and it is the first of its kind in Asia. It can take just 12 days to switch from mak­ing one vac­cine to an­oth­er, and the site will be near­ly car­bon neu­tral and use elec­tric­i­ty from its own so­lar pan­els.

Ex­cit­ing day in Sin­ga­pore where we laid the first stone of our new Evo­lu­tive Vac­cine Fa­cil­i­ty! This EVF will help im­prove peo­ple's lives by giv­ing them faster ac­cess to the most in­no­v­a­tive #vac­cines and treat­ments.

Learn more:https://t.co/QdalqP­wuKu pic.twit­ter.com/yx8CBQGXgk

— Sanofi (@sanofi) April 20, 2022

"Even when COVID-19 is even­tu­al­ly be­hind us, we must an­tic­i­pate and pre­pare for the next pan­dem­ic," Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Heng Swee Keat said at the ground­break­ing cer­e­mo­ny. "COVID-19 has re­in­forced the im­por­tance of pan­dem­ic pre­pared­ness and sup­ply chain re­silience. We must not take our foot off the ped­al when the pan­dem­ic fades."

Just one vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ing plant, be­long­ing to Glax­o­SmithK­line, ex­ist­ed be­fore the pan­dem­ic. It was mak­ing pneu­mo­coc­cal and Haemophilus in­fluen­zae anti­gens for Glax­o­SmithK­line's child­hood bac­te­r­i­al vac­cines, ac­cord­ing to The Straits Times.

Sin­ga­pore is al­so get­ting a vac­cine and bi­o­log­ics de­vel­op­ment hub from Hille­man Lab­o­ra­to­ries to aid the com­pa­ny's jour­ney to de­vel­op af­ford­able vac­cines against in­fec­tious dis­eases. That 30,000-square-foot site will cost around $58 mil­lion and is go­ing to be com­plet­ed around 2023, the com­pa­ny has said in the past. It will sup­port clin­i­cal tri­al ma­te­ri­als for up to Phase II de­vel­op­ment, and the R&D fa­cil­i­ty will be work­ing on can­di­date se­lec­tion, de­sign, man­u­fac­tur­ing process de­vel­op­ment, and pre­clin­i­cal stud­ies. The re­gion will al­so get a new 30,000-square-foot site from Gen­Script, which will help cus­tom pro­tein man­u­fac­tur­ing. Both these projects al­so fea­tured in­vest­ment from the Sin­ga­pore Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board.

Last April, a Sanofi spokesper­son said that a shift in the com­pa­ny's port­fo­lio pri­or­i­ties would lead to the clo­sure of a Philadel­phia-area plant that man­u­fac­tured the Flu­zone vac­cine. Just weeks be­fore, Sanofi an­nounced it was shelling out $703 mil­lion to build a Toron­to man­u­fac­tur­ing site that would be used to in­crease the sup­ply of Flu­zone.