WuXi Vaccines to build $240m facility in Ireland
WuXi Biologics had previously chosen County Louth, Ireland, to be the home of its first manufacturing site outside of China, with a €325m ($357m) single-use facility.
The Chinese company has continued to utilize Ireland as a hub outside of China by announcing that its subsidiary, WuXi Vaccines, will invest $240m in the construction of a manufacturing facility, located within the WuXi Biologics Campus in Dundalk.
Once completed, the facility will create 200 jobs in the region, adding to the 400 jobs already created by the single-use facility.
The vaccine facility will be able to produce drug substance and drug product, as well as possessing quality control labs, to produce vaccine product for an unnamed ‘large global pharma’ for the global market.
At the time of the creation of WuXi Vaccines, the company announced that it had signed a 20-year manufacturing contract with the unnamed company. The value of the contract itself was stated to be $3bn, allowing WuXi Vaccines to invest heavily in the manufacturing facility in the knowledge that it had guaranteed revenue.
The product that is set to be manufactured is currently undergoing clinical trials, with CEO of WuXi Biologics, Chris Chen, only telling BioPharma-Reporter, at the time, that the drug candidate would be a ‘first of its kind’ in the industry.
Chen added further that the vaccine contract development and organization (CDMO) business will be a future growth area for the company.
In first half financial results for 2019, WuXi Biologics was already able to point to strong growth in revenue, of 52.4%, with profit rising by 61.8%, to $94.9m, during this period.
