Kick-off this Wednesday of the production of vaccines made in France.
It is in Saint-Rémy-sur-Avre (Eure-et-Loir), in the factory of the subcontractor Delpharm, partner of Pfizer-BioNTech, that the first doses should be manufactured.
Read also: Vaccines: Merck boosts its production capacities in France
The French company, which has recruited around fifty people at its Normandy site, will not produce the active substance of the vaccine but will be responsible for its packaging.
It has invested 20 million euros in equipment, half of which is financed by the state, according to the
JDD
.
“
Our client sends us the vaccine, we are responsible for filling it into sterile vials,”
Stéphane Lepeu, head of Delpharm, who notably has 12 factories in France, told
Figaro
this winter
.
The vaccine arrives at - 70 ° C and we have to send it back to this temperature, this is the main constraint
. "
In Saint-Rémy-sur-Avre, "
several tens of millions of doses
Should be packaged by the end of the year.
Like most of its competitors, Delpharm, one of the world leaders in pharmaceutical subcontracting, had to buy millions of sterile vials and caps, products that were already threatening to run out in the fall as global demand was so high. .
Because Pfizer-BioNTech's messenger RNA vaccine had to be stored at very low temperatures (like Moderna's), he also had to order huge volumes of dry ice and super-freezers.
By the end of the month, it will be the turn of the Swedish Recipharm, one of the five largest global players in the sector, to start production.
It joins Moderna's other subcontractors, including the Swiss giant Lonza, which manufactures the active substance, the American Catalent and the Spanish Rovi.
“
We made ourselves urgently available to Moderna to fulfill this mission,”
Jean-François Hilaire, executive vice-president of Recipharm
,
explained to
Figaro
in the fall.
Our factory, which manufactures anesthetics, will now operate 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
”About sixty people have been recruited at its Indre-et-Loire site for this contract.
Two million euros were spent on the purchase of super-freezers and containers.
Read also: Covid-19: where are the factories that will produce the vaccines in France
"
France is about to switch to a massive production of vaccines
", welcomed Thierry Breton, European Commissioner in charge of the Vaccines task force, visiting this Sunday in the German CordenPharma factory in Chenôve ( Côte d'Or), near Dijon, which supplies Moderna with the nanolipids for its vaccine.
In France, Sanofi also plans to mobilize its Marcy-l'Étoile site, near Lyon, which will participate in the formulation and filling of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine vials at a rate of around 12 million doses per month.
The production of its own vaccine should then take over in the second half of the year, if its clinical trials are successful.
At this point, seven factories in France are expected to participate this year in the production of Covid vaccines and contribute to the manufacture of 250 million doses.
With this rise in production capacities, the challenge remains that of the sanitary independence of France.
"
It is our entire pharmaceutical fabric that needs to be rebuilt
", notes Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for Industry, in the
JDD
, who regrets "
thirty years of deindustrialisation in the pharmacy sector
".
In addition to packaging vaccines, France will also need to be able to control the production of the active substance in messenger RNA vaccines.
A technology which, in addition to Covid, paves the way for the treatment of many diseases, including cancer.
Sanofi, engaged with the American biotech Translate Bio in a messenger RNA-based Covid vaccine project, has made this platform one of its R&D priorities.