Financial Mail and Business Day

Biovac in search of R2bn in funding

Tamar Kahn kahnt@businesslive.co.za

The Biovac Institute is in talks with the US International Development Finance Corporation and other potential financiers as it seeks to raise R2bn to expand its vaccine manufacturing capacity. State-backed Biovac recently clinched a deal to bottle up to 100-million doses a year of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines.

The Biovac Institute is in talks with the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and other potential financiers, as it seeks to raise R2bn to expand its vaccine manufacturing capacity.

State-backed Biovac recently clinched a deal to bottle up to 100-million doses a year of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines and helps manufacture smaller volumes of childhood vaccines for Pfizer and Sanofi.

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted Africa’s dependence on vaccine imports and spurred a host of initiatives to ramp up manufacturing capacity on the continent, including support from international development finance institutions.

Increasing vaccine manufacturing capacity on the continent would not only help combat the coronavirus pandemic, but also put Africa in a better position to navigate future health crises, said DFC COO David Marchick, who is visiting SA and India this week.

The SA leg of his trip includes tours of Biovac and Aspen Pharmacare, which in June received a €600m long-term debt financing package from a consortium of development finance institutions that included the

DFC. Aspen has been contracted by Johnson & Johnson to formulate, fill and finish its Covid-19 shot, and aims to increase production to 450-million doses a year by February.

“We are working closely with the IFC [International Finance Corporation], European development banks, and others to increase vaccine (manufacturing) capacity in Africa.

“Hopefully with our support, and with partnerships with companies such as Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, SA cannot only expand its capacity for fill and finish but can also move up the development chain and get into [manufacturing] drug substance as well,” David Marchick said in an interview with Business Day.

“At the DFC we are focused on getting shots in arms as quickly as possible, so the focus is on [vaccine manufacturing] companies that have a partnership in place with existing pharmaceutical companies,” he said.

The partners identified by the DFC in India and Africa had the capacity to produce 2-billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines by the end of 2022, and there were more projects in the pipeline, he said.

Biovac CEO Morena Makhoana said the institute’s strategy was not limited to increasing production volumes, but also included extending its range of products and ultimately producing the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) used in the vaccines it manufactured.

“Fill and finish is a stepping stone, but the end game has to be API. The more you control the value chain, the more profitable it is,” he said.

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC HAS HIGHLIGHTED AFRICA’S DEPENDENCE ON VACCINE IMPORTS

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2021-10-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

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