The pharma giant is adding two Evolutive Vaccine Facilities (EVFs) to its worldwide industrial footprint – along with the site in Singapore, there will be another EVF in France.
“These EVFs represent the future of vaccine manufacturing, increasing our capacities while also making our production more flexible.
“Fully digitalized, our EVFs will enable more responsive and flexible manufacturing across multiple vaccine and biological platforms including mRNA, while minimizing our impact on the environment,” said the company.
Digging deeper on the benefits of EVFs, Sanofi outlined how up to four vaccines can be produced simultaneously on a single production site, and that it will only take about 12 days to switch from manufacturing one vaccine to another; moreover, the sites can be “nearly carbon-neutral” in that they will use green electricity or power from the site’s own solar panels
April last year saw the French group announce the Singapore project; the site, it said then, would mainly supply Asia but also complement existing manufacturing capabilities in Europe and North America. In partnership with the Singapore Economic Development Board, the project is expected to create up to 200 local jobs. The facility will be designed to respond quickly to future pandemic risks, and it will become a regional center of excellence for vaccine production in Asia.
French project
Sanofi said it is in “the building stage” for its new EVF in France.
The location for the new plant is Neuville-sur-Saône. That site, in which the company is investing €490m (US$528.3m) over a five-year period, will be close to its facility in Marcy-l’Etoile, and Sanofi Pasteur’s global headquarters, as well as the Genzyme production site of Sanofi, situated in the center of the Sanofi Biotechnology Hub in the city of Lyon.
The French project is also expected to create 200 new jobs.
