German chemicals company to expand its reach into mRNA ingredient production - Endpoints News

As the mR­NA field has be­come more pop­u­lar over the past sev­er­al years, thanks in large part to the de­vel­op­ment of cer­tain wild­ly pop­u­lar Covid-19 vac­cines, such as those from Mod­er­na and BioN­Tech, more com­pa­nies are look­ing to sink funds to ac­com­mo­date its pro­duc­tion.

Ger­man chem­i­cal com­pa­ny Wack­er Chemie AG, which has been around since 1914, has been a main­stay in the pro­duc­tion of sil­i­cone-based prod­ucts and oth­er med­i­c­i­nal chem­i­cals, but now its biotech di­vi­sion is look­ing to sink nine fig­ures in­to mR­NA pro­duc­tion.

On Tues­day, the com­pa­ny an­nounced it is in­vest­ing over €100 mil­lion, or over $101 mil­lion, in­to the de­vel­op­ment of the com­pa­ny’s biotech site in Halle, Ger­many in­to a new cen­ter to man­u­fac­ture mR­NA ac­tive in­gre­di­ents.

The pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty at the site will more than triple as part of the ex­pan­sion. Ac­cord­ing to the de­sign firm Exyte, which is the de­sign­er and builder of the project, the site will add a to­tal of 7,400 square me­ters to the gross floor area and 1,600 square me­ters will serve as a clean room. Four new pro­duc­tion lines are to be built, with part of the space be­ing made avail­able to the Ger­man gov­ern­ment for a pro­gram to pre­pare for any fu­ture pan­demics.

“We are hap­py that our ex­per­tise in mak­ing mR­NA vac­cines will con­tribute to the fight against fu­ture pan­demics. The ex­pan­sion of our Halle site will cre­ate ca­pac­i­ty to pre­pare for pan­demics and be­yond,” said Wack­er CEO Chris­t­ian Har­tel.

Ground­break­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Halle. Pic­tured from left to right: Michael Zorn from the Sax­ony-An­halt State Ad­min­is­tra­tion Of­fice; Eg­bert Geier, may­or of Halle; Melanie Käs­mark­er, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Wack­er Biotech GmbH; Sax­ony-An­halt’s Min­is­ter for Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs Sven Schulze; WACK­ER CEO Chris­t­ian Har­tel; Armin Will­ing­mann, Sax­ony-An­halt’s Min­is­ter for Sci­ence, En­er­gy, Cli­mate Pro­tec­tion and En­vi­ron­ment; Wolf­gang Büchele, CEO of Exyte; Gui­do Sei­del, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Wack­er Biotech GmbH; Ulf-Marten Schmieder, CEO of Tech­nolo­giepark Wein­berg Cam­pus and Joachim Bug, deputy di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Pan­dem­ic Vac­cines and Ther­a­peu­tics (ZEPAI). (Pho­to cred­it: Wack­er Chemie AG)

Click on the im­age to see the full-sized ver­sion

Ac­cord­ing to Wack­er, the new build­ing will have four floors, which are to be con­nect­ed to the ex­ist­ing build­ing. Along­side the four pro­duc­tion lines, the space will al­so con­tain stor­age ar­eas and qual­i­ty con­trol lab­o­ra­to­ries, as well as of­fices and recre­ation rooms. The com­pa­ny in­tends to hire around 200 new em­ploy­ees as part of the ex­pan­sion. New staffers are be­ing sought in all de­part­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly lab­o­ra­to­ry as­sis­tants and pro­duc­tion is set to kick off some­time in 2024.

Wack­er’s in­vest­ment in biotech is part of a larg­er com­pa­ny strat­e­gy. The com­pa­ny an­nounced in March that it would sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease its in­vest­ments in the biotech busi­ness, as it looks to in­vest more than €80 mil­lion per year in this area in the next few years. By 2030, Wack­er wants biotech to con­tribute around €1 bil­lion to group sales.

Pro­duc­tion of mR­NA-re­lat­ed prod­ucts has be­come a hot mar­ket as Mod­er­na and BioN­Tech are mak­ing strides for wider mR­NA in­gre­di­ent and vac­cine pro­duc­tion. Pfiz­er for their part re­cent­ly net­ted a deal to pro­duce a syn­thet­ic DNA prod­uct, dubbed dog­gy­bone DNA, from the UK-based biotech Touch­light.

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German chemicals company to expand its reach into mRNA ingredient production - Endpoints News
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