THE flu vaccine plant to be built in Shenzhen, agreed in a deal signed Monday between China and France’s Sanofi-Aventis Group, will be the largest investment ever by a foreign drug maker in China.
The 700-million-yuan (US$95.5-million) plant will be built at the National Biological Industrial Base in Shenzhen’s Longgang Grand Industrial Zone.
The factory, to be run by Sanofi-Pasteur, the vaccine division of Europe’s largest pharmaceuticals company Sanofi-Aventis, is expected to commence in early 2008. It would produce 25 million doses annually once production begins in 2012. By then, Shenzhen is expected to become China’s — even Asia’s — biggest vaccine manufacturing base.
The agreement was one of several business deals signed Monday in the presence of Chinese President Hu Jintao and visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
It is a result of three years of negotiations between the company and the Shenzhen government.
“The investment is also a milestone in the history of Shenzhen biological industry development,” said Shenzhen Mayor Xu Zongheng. “This new facility will also make it possible for the firm to produce pandemic influenza vaccine in China in the event of a human influenza pandemic.”
Last year Sanofi’s existing vaccine packaging plant in Shenzhen delivered 5 million doses of flu vaccine. Its sales of vaccines in China amounted to 600 million yuan so far this year, up 20 percent from a year earlier.
“China is joining a growing number of countries focusing on the prevention of diseases and recognizing the value of vaccines. The time is right for the company to further invest in China and prepare to provide this fast-growing market with the most modern vaccines to be produced in a state-of-the-industry facility,” said Gerard Le Fur, chief executive officer of Sanofi-Aventis, at a news conference in Beijing on Monday.
The new plant will be able to rapidly switch production from seasonal flu vaccines to a pandemic flu vaccine, including for the H5N1 virus, or bird flu.
Sanofi’s new plant will also be capable of expanding capacity to keep pace with the explosive growth in demand for vaccines in China, with room to double production to 50 million doses annually over the next 10-15 years, the company said.
Sanofi-Pasteur is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer with annual sales last year of 2.5 billion euros (US$3.7 billion), up 22.7 percent from a year earlier. It has a 25 percent share of the 11-billion-euro global vaccine market.
The Chinese vaccine market is worth about 480 million euros annually, but foreign drug makers have captured only about 22 percent of the market. That market is growing rapidly, however, with the number of doses of flu vaccine expected to grow from 12 million in 2003 to 108 million in 2020.
Globally, between 500,000 and 1 million people die from seasonal flu each year. World demand for flu vaccine was 400 million doses last year and is forecast to double by 2016.
Sanofi-Aventis has been operating in China since 1982. It is now No. 6 player in the country’s 12-billion euro pharmaceutical market.
(Li Jing)
