The French laboratory Sanofi will invest 610 million euros in France, in particular to create a new vaccine production site, he announced Tuesday during the visit of President Emmanuel Macron to one of its factories in the Lyon region.
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490 million euros over five years, and 200 jobs
The group will invest nearly half a billion euros in a new factory in Neuville-sur-Saône in the Lyon region, to create its "Evolutive Vaccine Facility". The new site "will use the most innovative technologies in the field of vaccine production," said the laboratory, adding that the investment of 490 million euros over five years should create 200 new jobs.
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"Securing vaccine supplies in the event of new pandemics"
This factory will allow Sanofi to "secure the supply of vaccines to France and Europe in the event of new pandemics", specifies the group, while States around the world have launched a race to secure access to a coronavirus vaccine. This new plant will make it possible to produce 3 to 4 vaccines simultaneously, compared to only one in current industrial sites.
An investment hailed by Emmanuel Macron
"The investment you have just announced is a great link between the two acts of the battle we have to fight," said Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday during a press conference on the site of Sanofi Marcy-L'Etoile, evoking the distant health crisis and the economic crisis that has started. "The project announced today is to put Sanofi and France in the excellence of the fight against the virus," he added.
A new research center
This investment will add 120 million euros to create a new research and development center on the Sanofi Pasteur site in Marcy-l'Etoile. This complex will notably be devoted to the development of vaccines against emerging diseases and pandemic risks.
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Sanofi, which is one of the main global players in the production of vaccines, is currently working on the development of two vaccines against Covid-19, expected during 2021. The group had created controversy last month, when its managing director Paul Hudson had raised the possibility of favoring the United States, which invested in its search for vaccines against the coronavirus.