The Mainz-based company BioNTech SE, which has become known all over the world within a very short time due to the development of its corona vaccine, which is currently in high demand, is to receive additional premises for a science campus around its headquarters in Mainz.

Within the next few years, several buildings with enough space for offices and modern research facilities, such as laboratories and clean rooms, could be built on two more than four hectares of land in the Generalfeldzeugmeister barracks, which are to be cleared anyway.

Markus Schug

Correspondent Rhein-Main-Süd.

  • Follow I follow

    Apparently there is no binding schedule for this yet.

    The representatives of the rapidly growing biotechnology company also did not want to comment on the possible investment amount in a video conference on Tuesday.

    In the medium term, the number of employees at the site is likely to increase from 1,300 at the moment to more than 3,000 in the future, it said.

    While Mainz will continue to be the company's research and administration center, Miriam Ostheimer and François Clement Perrineau described the strategy;

    meanwhile, corona vaccines and agents for cancer therapies are being produced in Marburg and Idar-Oberstein.

    Planned growth spurt

    The city wants to secure the land between Jägerstrasse and Freiligrathstrasse, which is required for the planned growth spurt in the upper town, by means of a right of first refusal and with the help of the local property management company, which will later also be responsible for the development of the district. According to the Lord Mayor, Michael Ebling (SPD), it is not decisive whether this can happen this year or not until mid-2022.

    More than half of the total of ten hectares of the Bundeswehr area is to be transformed into an attractive city quarter with around 450 apartments and a green zone along with a new local administration. The development plan "O 53", which has been modified in recent months and which, according to the department head Marianne Grosse (SPD), is to be presented to the building and renovation committee in June, not least takes into account that the Mainz-based company will have to take even stronger safety precautions in the future.

    The Mainz people knew about the “jewel” in their city limits, which had not only acquired a very good reputation due to the corona pandemic, said Ebling, who also pointed out that the city has always been in close contact for the past ten years confessed to the company, which was owed to a university spin-off. Fittingly, the newly formed Rhineland-Palatinate state government on May 18th has expressly committed itself to strengthening biomedicine and especially the Mainz location with the BioNTech nucleus.

    According to Ostheimer, the fact that there will also be shops and two day-care centers around the campus, which has yet to be created, will certainly help bring young scientists into the city and thus give them the opportunity to “become an international company based in To build up Mainz ”.