Sanofi breaks ground on $638m Tuas vaccine facility

French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi broke ground yesterday on its state-of-the-art vaccine facility in Singapore, which will allow it to quickly pivot to making new vaccines that might be needed to combat future pandemics.

Sanofi is investing €900 million (S$1.3 billion) over five years to create two such facilities globally - one in France and the $638 million production site in Tuas here.

The move will help push out vaccines quickly for the region, should they be required, and also create high-skilled jobs within Singapore. Sanofi is the latest major pharmaceutical player to look at churning out vaccines in Singapore.

"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," Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic Policies Heng Swee Keat said at the groundbreaking ceremony yesterday.

"By enhancing our capacity for manufacturing vaccines in Singapore, the region will be in a stronger position for dealing with future pandemics and the ensuing economic shocks."

Mr Heng also said Singapore has the ingredients to help biopharmaceutical companies grow and contribute to the region, in terms of scale, innovation and talent.

Sanofi, which makes prescription medications, paediatric vaccines, and vaccines for diseases such as influenza, polio and yellow fever, is among several major global players that have announced plans to manufacture vaccines in Singapore. The others are BioNTech, Hilleman Laboratories and Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Sanofi said its evolutive vaccine facility (EVF) is the first of its kind and is targeted for completion at the end of 2025. The fully digitalised facility can produce up to four different types of vaccines at one go, unlike current facilities around the world that can make just one at a time.

"It will enable us to do both classical vaccines that already exist, and new vaccines with new technologies," said Sanofi's executive vice-president for vaccines Thomas Triomphe.

"We know that Covid-19 is not going to be here forever. So, with these evolutive facilities, we are already planting the seeds and preparing for the next pandemic, and this is the level of agility that you need."

Mr Triomphe said: "Singapore is not just an economic hub, but also a technology and innovation hub... To proceed with massive investments like the EVF, you need to have a whole ecosystem of suppliers of raw materials, of starters, of innovation technologies in the same area."

Located at Tuas Biomedical Park, the Sanofi facility is expected to create up to 200 skilled jobs for the local workforce.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Singapore had a plant in Tuas that manufactured pneumococcal and Haemophilus influenzae antigens for GSK's childhood bacterial vaccines. "There was also limited investment in vaccine research," Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, an infectious diseases expert at the National University of Singapore's Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, said in an e-mail interview.

"The Covid-19 pandemic appears to have changed the thinking of our policymakers, with the announcement of several companies building vaccine manufacturing plants in Singapore," he added.

He noted that there was also a lot more funding for vaccine research. Singapore is committing $25 billion to research, innovation and enterprise over five years until 2025.

"Sustained investment in this area may help guard against future pandemics in the sense that we may have a relative advantage in both vaccine development and supply," said Prof Hsu.