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Pfizer is to start producing supplies of its Covid-19 vaccine from its Grange Castle plant in Dublin as part of a new $40 million investment locally, the company confirmed on Thursday.
The Grange Castle facility will produce the mRNA drug substance, making it only the second plant outside of Pfizer’s factory in Andover, Massachusetts to do so.
The multimillion euro investment is on top of a €300 million programme of investment announced for three Irish plants by the company last year.
The pharma giant said it will be creating an additional 75 jobs as part of the new investment.
While building and securing regulatory approval for vaccine plants is a process that normally takes two years, the urgent focus on Covid-19 vaccine supplies means it hopes to be ready to go live around the end of this year.
Pfizer’s vaccine is currently being assessed by European regulators for use in young adults from the age of 12. The company is also running a separate trial on the performance of the vaccine, developed in association with German company BioNTech, in children from the age of six months to 11 years of age.
The drug giant is in ongoing talks with the European Union over an agreement to supply an additional 1.8 billion doses to the bloc’s 27 member states, which was flagged by European commission president earlier this month.
Pfizer has been significantly increasing commitments on vaccine supply. It initially expected to produce just 1.3 billion doses worldwide in 2021. That has since jumped to 1.7 billion, then two billion and, more recently, 2.5 billion. And that figure could yet rise as high as three billion.
That has involved upgrading existing plants - including Purs in Belgium, which is Pfizer’s only European plant producing Covid-19 vaccine currently - as well as signing a third-party supply deal with vaccine giant Sanofi to boost supplies.