Supply Chain

THIS PAGE IS OUT OF DATE.

How long to make?

See an earlier blog post on how long to switch strains. The Wikipedia article on Pfizer manufacturing also contains information on how long each step takes. This article talks a little about why you can’t just turn on more production with the flick of a switch.

Vaccine production locations

I started keeping track of where vaccines were made to better understand supply chain issues. (For example, if Belgium has a general strike or Texas freezes, how will that impact production?)

For more information on the vaccine supply chain, see this outstanding article.

Pfizer

Different plants for different steps: 

• The DNA templates are made at a small Pfizer pilot plant in Chesterfield, Missouri near St. Louis.
• Marburg, Germany (active substance and completed vax)
• Andover, Massachusetts; 
• Kalamazoo, Michigan (pack&fill)
• St. Louis
• Puurs, Belgium
• Pack&fill: Sanofi in Frankfurt (starting 2021Q2)
• Marburg (2021H1)
• contracted to Thermo Fisher in Monza, IT

French firm Delpharm eventually(?)

Moderna

• Most manufacturing contracted to Lonza in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and at its main site in Visp, Switzerland.
• At lease some of the pDNA from Aldevron in Fargo, ND, USA
• Lipids from CordenPharma from three facilities in Europe and one in Boulder, Colorado.
• Catalent for pack&fill, at least initially
• Moderna has also contracted with Laboratorios Farmacéuticos Rovi, a Spanish company, to provide similar services for “hundreds of millions” of doses to be supplied outside the US
• By Lonza in Netherlands.
• By Recipharm in France
• Fill-finish by Catalent in Indiana
• Fill-finish by Sanofi in Ridgefield, NJ
• Fill-finish by Samsung Biologics in Incheon, South Korea
• Baxter to do fill-finish in Bloomington, Indiana
• Rovi does fill-finish in Spain near Madrid; will also make ingredients in Granada
• Sweden’s Recipharm does fill-finish in France

mRNA for clinical trials was made in-house at Norwood, Massachusetts

This press release (2024-02-23) reports that Moderna has finished building a factory in Laval, QC.

AstraZeneca

Contracted to:

• Halix in Leiden, NL for the active substance
• Emergent BioSolutions in Baltimore Emergent was such a clusterfuck and the US never approved AZ, so they shut down the AZ line and gave the whole plant over to J&J management.
• Serum Institute of India
• SK Bioscience in Korea
• Two Brazilian research institutes (one is probably Fiocruz institute)

Johnson&Johnson AKA Janssen

By Emergent BioSolutions in Baltimore (two plants) and the Netherlands

Sanofi to help Janssen in Marcy L’Etoile, France

Merck to help Janssen in the US, one plant doing fill-finish and one making serum.

Somewhere in India. Also Biological E Ltd in India, which is a major manufacturer of low-cost drugs.

Fill-finish in the US is currently being done by Grand River Aseptic, with plants in Michigan, and Catalent, at a plant in Bloomington, Indiana.

In Italy, Catalent also is helping Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca manufacture their vaccines.

Canada has approved J&J factories in both the US and Europe, but it’s not clear at this point which factories we’ll get the vax from.

Novavax

• Contracted to Serum Institute of India
• SK Bioscience, Korea will manufacture the vaccine antigen component
• Novavax will manufacture at National Research Council’s Biologics Manufacturing Centre in Montréal once both the vaccine candidate and the facility receive Health Canada approvals Yeah, that didn’t happen, as this article (2025-03-11) discusses.
• Fujifilm facility in Stockton-on-Tees, UK
• Finishing at GlaxoSmithKline’s facility in Barnard Castle in County Durham, UK from early May.
• purchased Czech plant
• Takeda Pharmaceutical — 250M doses/year
• GlaxoSmithKline intends to make up to 60 million doses for the United Kingdom.

Novavax had real trouble with manufacturing, eventually licensing to Serum Institute of India.

This article (2021-02-21) said there are plans to make Novavax at a new government-owned factory in Montreal, but this article (2022-01-07) says that production has been delayed. And this article (2025-03-11) says the contract has been cancelled.

Here’s an article on Novavax’ partnerships and manufacturing.

Providence Therapeutics (mRNA)

• The company has purchased a site in Calgary to mass produce the vaccine. 
• Calgary manufacturing company Northern RNA is working alongside Providence Therapeutics to create some of the building blocks of messenger RNA for the vaccine.
• bottled by Emergent BioSolutions at its manufacturing site in Winnipeg

Sanofi

• Toronto (coming online in 2021)
• ~75 other plants

CureVac

• Fareva in Pau and Val de Reuil, France to do fill&finish

Sinovac

• China
• UAE

Medicago

The Medicago web site (2022-02-24) says they have a factory in Durham, North Carolina and are also building a factory in Quebec that will be much bigger.

VIDO-InterVac

This article says that the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization is building a factory with government help to make 40M doses of vax per eyar.